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Show 1875.] MR. J. W. CLARK ON EARED SEALS. 6*55 Flinders * gives a vast number of notices respecting the Seals he found on the different islands in the Strait. He seems to have takeu a naturalist's and not a speculator's interest in them. Feb. 16, 1798.-Large Hair-Seals were met with on Battery Island-a rock in the channel between Cape-Barren Island and the southern islands. The rocks of Clarke's Island " were also frequented by hair-seals ; and some of them (the old males) were of an enormous size and extraordinary power. I levelled m y gun at one, which was sitting on the top of a rock with his nose extended up towards the sun, and struck him with three musket-balls. He rolled over, and plunged into the water; but in less than half au hour had taken his former station and attitude. On firing again, a stream of blood spouted forth from his breast to some yards distance, and he fell back senseless. On examination, the six balls were found lodged in his breast; and one, which had occasioned his death, had pierced the heart : his weight was equal to that of a common ox" (vol. i. p. cxxviii). On Cone Point " the number of seals exceeded every thing we had, any of us, before witnessed ; and they were smaller, and of a different species from those which frequented Armstrong's Channel. Instead of the bull-dog nose, and thinly set, sandy hair, these had sharp-pointed noses, and the general colour of the hair approached to a black : but the tips were of a silver-grey, and underneath was a fine, whitish, thick fur. The commotion excited by our presence, in this assemblage of several thousand timid animals, was very interesting to me, who knew little of their manners. The young cubs huddled together in the holes of the rocks, and moaned piteously; those more advanced scampered and rolled down to the water, with their mothers; whilst some of the old males stood up in defence of their families, until the terror of the sailors' bludgeons became too strong to be resisted. Those who have seen a farm-yard, well stocked with pigs, calves, sheep, oxen, and with two or three litters of puppies, with their mothers, in it, and have heard them all in tumult together, may form a good idea of the confused noise of the seals at Cone Point. The sailors killed as many of these harmless and not unamiable creatures as they were able to skin during the time necessary for me to take the requisite angles; and we then left the poor affrighted multitude to recover from the effect of our inauspicious visit" (p. cxxix.). " The hair-seal appears to frequent the sheltered beaches, points, and rocks: whilst the rocks and rocky points exposed to the bufferings of the waves are preferred by the handsomer and superior species, which never condescends to the effeminacy of a beach. A point or island will not be greatly resorted to by these animals, unless it slope gradually to the water, and the shore be, as we term it, steep to. This is the case with the islet lying off Cape Barren, * A Voyage to Terra Australis, in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, by Matthew Flinders (2 vols. 4to, London, 1814). The introduction, paged in Eoman numerals, contains an excellent account of the previous explorations of himself and others. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1875, No. XLII. 42 |