18 EDWARD A. WILSON. 
curly, indeed, that in a hair of 1°7 cm. in length there are no less than eight or ten 
curves or bends. It is worn for the first fortnight, though at the end of this period it 
has a less woolly appearance and the hair seems shorter. There is also a suggestion 
of light spots on the sides and darker marks and splashes beneath as in the adult 
animal. The change in the character of the coat is due more to the fact of the 
animal’s rapid growth at this time (from 57 inches at birth to 72 inches at the end 
of a fortnight), than to any actual change in the woolly covering itself; though it is 
possible that some of the curly hairs begin to drop out earlier than the straight. At 
the end of a fortnight, however, a regular moult begins (see fig. 19, p. 22), and observing 
as strict an order as in the adult, the wool is first shed from the head and flippers, both 
fore and hind simultaneously ; then running along the mid-line of the back it spreads 
down the sides and eventually clears the chest and belly. This process occupies a 
fortnight, so that by the end of the first month of its life the young seal has shed 
the coat it was born in, and has assumed a very rich and handsomely marked coat 
of thick, straight, and short hair, thus becoming an exact copy in miniature of the 
most handsomely marked adults, while measuring between 6 and 7 feet from nose to 
tail instead of about 9 feet (see fig. 20, p. 24). 
Up to this stage the infant has been wholly dependent upon its mother for susten- 
ance, and the mother leaving her offspring on the ice has regularly entered the water to 
supply herself with food. The young seal thus left to itself either sleeps in the sun or 
crawls under the shelter of a neighbouring hummock. Many of them at this stage 
succumb to the cold, and it is by no means an uncommon thing to find them dead a 
day or two after their birth. Their eyes are open at birth, and the involution of the 
umbilical cord takes several days. The young seal is found at times with the cord 
intact, attached to the expelled placenta. Presumably the cord is bitten through by 
the mother, though we did not see this done. The placenta with its membranes is soon 
demolished by the Skua gulls, which attend in numbers, but it did not appear to strike 
them that the young seals would form an easy prey. In no case did we see even a 
dead young seal attacked. Probably the skin proves a difficulty, though the blubber 
beneath when exposed by ourselves in a skinned seal was very rapidly stripped by these 
birds. Occasionally we would skin a seal and leave it on the floe to be flenced by Skuas ; 
and though it was never completely cleaned, the total weight of the skin, which might 
have to be dragged for some miles upon a sledge to reach the ship, was much reduced. 
Weddell’s Seal suckles her young, and in no case did we see more than one 
young one born to any seal, upon the ice. Lying upon her side she exposes two 
nipples in the abdominal region (see Seals, Plate I.), which, though hardly visible when 
not in use, are erectile organs which become prominent when the youngissucking. The 
milk is white and creamy and the glands flat and extensive beneath the skin, showing 
no prominence from without. Not more than two glands and two nipples are developed. 
The mother seemed to be much attached to her infant, and in some cases 
would attack us viciously if we attempted to interfere with it. In others she was 
