LEFT FORE (A) AND HIND (B) FLIPPER OF NEW ZEALAND FUR SEAL. (After J. W. Clark.)
At the beginning of this century the sealing-trade of New South Wales was at its height, and vessels, manned by crews of from twenty-five to thirty men, pursued the craft. Mr. Scott, on the authority of Mr. Morris, an old Sydney sealer by profession, remarks that “to so great an extent was this indiscriminate killing carried, that in two years (1814–15) no less than 400,000 skins were obtained from Penantipod, or Antipodes Island, alone, and necessarily collected in so hasty a manner that very many of them were but imperfectly cured. The ship Pegasus took home 100,000 of these in bulk, and on her arrival in London, the skins, having heated during the voyage, had to be dug out of the hold, and were sold as manure—a sad and reckless waste of life.”
THE ASH-COLOURED OTARY.[218]—It is to be regretted that a memoir on the Eared Seals from the pen of the admirable Péron was lost to science by his lamented early demise. The French savant, when sojourning on the South Australian coast at Kangaroo Island, found a new species of the genus, which he named O. cinerea, this attaining a length of nine to ten feet. He stated that the hair of this animal is very short, hard, and coarse, but its leather is thick and strong, and the oil prepared from its fat is as good as it is abundant and he recommends pursuit of it and the other Seals with fur of good quality.
Most likely it is the same animal to which Flinders alludes when he says, speaking of Kangaroo Island, which abounded with Kangaroos and Seals: “They seem to dwell mainly together. It not unfrequently happened that the report of a gun fired at a Kangaroo near the beach brought out two or three bellowing Seals from under the bushes considerably farther from the water-side. The Seal, indeed, seems to be much the more discerning animal of the two; for its actions bespoke a knowledge of our not being Kangaroos, whereas the Kangaroo not unfrequently appeared to consider us to be Seals.”
It evidently is to Péron’s animal, or one otherwise not to be distinguished from it, that the naturalists of the Astrolabe, fully twenty year after, referred as the Phoque cendrée frequenting Port Western, Australia. This appears to be a distinct animal from others hitherto described, though so little is positively known that I shall merely draw attention to its colour. It is grey on the back, lighter on the muzzle, and rusty-grey on the lower parts of the body. It has sparse reddish under-fur, and Clark states of the somewhat dilapidated skin preserved in the Paris Museum that it has a length of between seven and eight feet.
CHAPTER III.
III.—THE EARLESS SEAL FAMILY (PHOCIDÆ).
General Characteristics—Peculiar Formation of the Hind Legs—Dentition—Swimming—[THE COMMON SEAL]—Range—Fight between a Seal and Salmon—Colour—Appearance—Annual Catch—Use of Skins in Greenland—Habits—[THE RINGED SEAL]—Appearance—Various Names—Odour—Flesh—Skin Clothes—Haunts—Modes of Capture—Range—[THE GREENLAND, OR SADDLEBACK SEAL]—Habits—Appearance—Names—Range—Migrations—“Seals’ Weddings”—Five Stages of Colour—Females—Weight—Seal Fisheries—Hunting—Implements of Slaughter—Various Operations—The Sealers—Oil, Skins, &c.—[THE BEARDED SEAL]—[THE GREY SEAL]—[THE MONK SEAL]—[THE CRESTED OR BLADDER-NOSE SEAL]—Range—Size—Ferocity—Character of the so-called Crest—Dentition—Colour—[THE ELEPHANT SEAL]—Peculiar Range—Proboscis—Scammon’s Account—Habits—Hunting—Hardships of the Hunters—Recreations of the Men—Blubber, Oil, and Skins—[ROSS’S LARGE-EYED SEAL]—[THE SEA LEOPARD]—[WEDDELL’S SEAL]—[THE CRAB-EATING SEAL]—Concluding Remarks—The Slaughter of Seals—Remedies.
HIND FLIPPERS OF RINGED SEAL. (Original after Murie.)
A, opened out; B, closed.