Zoology.'] 



NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. 



{Mammalia. 



The Hon. David Moore has kindly furnished me with a great 

 deal of valuable information respecting the old trade at Sydney in 

 the Fur- Seals of this species. The males he mentions were more 

 valuable than the others ; these were entered in the invoices under 

 the trade term of " Wigs," the females being entered as " Klap- 

 matches," and the young as " Pups." The trade, he informs me, 

 has now entirely ceased in New South Wales, Victoria, and South 

 Australia, partly from the animals being scared away by the traffic 

 of a multitude of steamers and other vessels, and partly from the 

 greater scarcity of labor no longer leaving it profitable to pay a 

 sufficiently numerous crew of a vessel to man the several boats 

 required. Colonel Champ also informs me that five-and-twenty 

 years ago he used to see several of the islands between the Tas- 

 manian and Victorian shores covered with numbers of these Fur- 

 Seals, of which it is a rare circumstance to see a single individual 

 now in the localities where they were so common formerly. 



I subjoin in foot-note an amusing notice of one of the young 

 specimens now in the Museum, w r ritten by the late clever observer 

 and artist, Ludwig Becker.* 



To render the comparison of the New Zealand Otaria with our 

 Victorian species easy, I give here carefully- drawn wood-cuts of 

 the teeth of E. cinerea, natural size, showing distinct anterior and 



Side view of upper and lower teeth, natural size, viewed from the outside. The separate tooth is the last upper molar, 

 viewed from inner side, showing the arched divided fang. 



* " Professor McCoy. University, 24th January 1859.— Young female Seal, caught alive, 

 vis-a-vis Wilhelmi's residence (Punt road, not far oif from Gardiner's Creek road, south), sitting 

 under a tree, early in the morning yesterday week; it was lively and galloped alongside 

 Wilhelmi, who was leading it home with a rope. The nearest point of the Yarra is distant say 



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