54 EDWARD A. WILSON. 
fore limbs of the Otariide, the large watery eyes and gaping mouth, and, above all, 
the disproportionately rapid tailing off of the hinder parts. 
As we approached he began to edge towards the water, and had even entered it 
before we killed him. To haul such an animal up on the beach was no light task, for 
being a half-grown male his weight was probably half a ton or more. The mouth and 
tongue were fleshy pink, the latter short and thick with a deep-cut notch in the distal 
end. The eyeballs were very large with dark brown irides. All these parts were put 
on one side to be preserved, but though they lay quite close to us as we flenced the 
skin we were robbed of them by the Skua gulls. The whole skin moreover was after- 
wards buried in a mound of sand, yet the Skuas went to the trouble of uncovering 
it in part, and made bare patches on the back by pecking off the hair. 
The boldness of this bird, combined with its strength of bill and claw, must 
never be forgotten by the collector in these regions, for it matters not what is left 
lying on the ice, they will soon have tried either to eat or to remove it. One views 
with small pleasure a Skua flying off to sea with a favourite knife-sheath or a belt; 
even coats are dragged about the ground, and bits of blubber freely taken from the 
hand. 
The stomach of this Sea Elephant was empty, as also was the entire length of the 
intestines, which were very uniform in size and quite firmly contracted into a cord-like 
structure containing only a few small nematodes. Nevertheless, it was a heavily 
blubbered animal, to the extent of two or three inches under the skin, the whole 
body over. One cannot think, therefore, that it had been starving for any great 
length of time, and how it can have found its food on these icebound coasts, so 
different to those of its normal habitat, is difficult to see. From its dentition one 
would be led to consider that cephalopods must form the greater part of its 
subsistence. 
The cheek teeth are in every way degenerate when compared with the well- 
developed canines and incisors, and this is a feature which may be expected more in 
an animal that lives on soft-bodied animals than in one that must either catch fish or 
crush the shells of molluscs. The small peg-top plaited crowns of its cheek teeth are 
in no sense adapted to such work. If a series of the skulls of this animal be examined, 
there will be found a variability in the number and permanence of the cheek teeth 
which reminds one strongly of the same feature in the dentition of Ommatophoca, 
Of the five skulls of Macrorhinus leoninus, at present in the British Museum, 
no less than three are aberrant from what one must take as the normal dentition. 
This is as follows :— 
2—2 1—l]1 5-—5 
Lo, C ——, P.c, ——. 
1—1 Cea ee 
Flower gave the milk dentition as— 
Teco” a oy emcee Sean 
