A GIANT AMONG SEALS 231 
The generic title Macrorhinus refers to the most dis- 
tinctive feature of the species, the peculiar trunk-like form 
of the muzzle of the old males. Not only do the male 
and female elephant-seal differ in regard to the form of 
the muzzle (the trunk being undeveloped in the last-named 
sex), but there is also a vast inferiority in the size of the 
latter as compared with the former. So marked, indeed, 
is this discrepancy, that an early observer is stated in 
Weddell’s “ Voyage” to have mistaken the two sexes for 
mother and young. 
From the testimony of old “beach-combers” and others 
who have hunted them in their native haunts, it seems 
evident that the dimensions now attained by sea-elephants 
fall far short of those reached in the old days, when they 
abounded on the islands of the South Seas, and were 
permitted to grow to their full size. In the majority of 
text-books twenty feet is given as the length of the species ; 
but it is definitely known that specimens at the present 
day frequently reach or exceed this length, and as none 
of these (as exemplified by the condition of the bones in 
the British Museum and other skeletons received of late 
years in England) appear to be fully adult, it seems well- 
nigh certain that old bulls must have grown to much 
greater size. Probably twenty-five feet would not be an 
undue estimate for the length of an adult male, and it is 
far from improbable that close upon thirty feet may have 
been reached in some cases. 
Among the favourite haunts of the elephant-seal were 
the islands of the Crozet group, Kerguelen, and St. Paul, 
in the Indian Ocean, as well as Heard Island. In the 
South Atlantic these monsters formerly abounded on 
Tristan-da-Cunha, and nearer the American coast they are 
again met with farther south on the Falklands, South 
