THE KILLER. ' 
coloured saddle on the back behind the dorsal fin: there was a patch of paler buff behind 
the eye, and so far as could be seen, the under parts were also pale yellowish white ° 
Often they followed close in under the ship’s stern, disporting themselves like 
the smallest of the Dolphins; and in a herd that followed our ship on February 17th, 
1904, we saw the young ones with their mothers. The young had not yet developed 
the yellow saddle, but its position was marked out as a dull grey patch in the 
darker colour of the back. The ear patch, however, was already distinct and of 
a yellow colour quite conspicuously marked. In the oldest, or at any rate the largest, 
the saddle is mainly ochreous yellow with an ill-defined anterior border which merges 
into the grey-black back. The posterior border on the other hand is well-defined. 
There is much variation in the size and general shape of the dorsal fin in this 
species, as may be gathered from the sketches given below (fig. 6), which were taken 
from the animals, as they sported round the ship, in McMurdo Sound. 
It is probable that some of these Killers remain always as far south as the 
periodical opening-up of the sea ice will allow them. They were with us in the 
autumn to the last days of open water in McMurdo Sound, and were again at 
once apparent when the ice broke up in the spring. Throughout the open part of 
the year, from the middle of September to the middle of March, we had schools of this 
whale in MeMurdo Sound; and, no doubt, we could have found them a little farther 
north in winter as often as the ice in Ross Sea was broken up by the southerly winter gales. 
For its diet in the south we have no actual evidence, but, regarding its alleged 
propensity for seals and penguins, there can be no possible doubt in my opinion 
that the scars and wounds inflicted on so many of the seals in the pack ice are 
the marks of wanton, or unsuccessful, attacks made on them by these whales. 
Such rents are exceedingly common, both as recently inflicted wounds and as mended 
scars, and the chief sufferers are the Lobodon Seals, which live habitually in the pack 
ice of the open sea, and not Weddell’s Seals, which keep to the sheltered bights 
and bays along the coast-line or the cliffs of great ice barriers. An old Lobodon is 
but rarely to be found without some scars upon his coat; and an idea of the extensive 
character of some of these wounds may be gathered from the account given below 
(see p. 39), and from the figure there given, which is taken from scars on one of the skins 
in our collection. The whole question of the probable causation of these scars being 
fully discussed in that chapter, I must refer my readers to it, and state here only that 
I have no doubt whatever in my own mind that the Killer is responsible for them. 
Penguins, also, in all probability pay heavy toll to these marauding bands, and 
from the excessive hurry in which they are often seen to leave the water when a herd 
of Killers is in sight, it is evident that they know their danger sufficiently well. 
nee they show to re-entering the water, even when chased by 
s an additional proof that they know quite well where 
and that they feel it is safer to tackle an unknown and 
e what they know to be a certain danger in the water. 
Moreover, the repugna 
men or dogs upon the ice, i 
their customary danger lies, 
novel risk on the ice than to fac 
