dred thousand skins were taken
in a few years, and of late not a single specimen has been seen.

Closely related to the fur seals are the much larger animals popularly
known as sea-lions. These still exist in great numbers in south
temperate waters. Both are distinguished from the hair seals by one
obvious characteristic: their method of propulsion on land is by a
"lolloping" motion, in which the front and hind flippers are used
alternately. The hair seals move by a caterpillar-like shuffle, making
little or no use of their flippers; and so, the terminal parts of
their flippers are not bent outwards as they are in the fur seals and
sea-lions.

Of the hair seals there are five varieties to be recognized in the
far South. The Weddell seals, with their mottled-grey coats, are the
commonest. They haunt the coasts of Antarctica and are seldom found at
any distance from them. Large specimens of this species reach nine and a
half feet in length.

The crab-eater seal, a smaller animal, lives mostly on the pack-ice.
Lying on a piece of floe in the sunshine it has a glistening,
silver-grey skin--another distinguishing mark being its small, handsome
head and short, thin neck. Small crustaceans form its principal food.

The Ross seal, another inhabitant of the pack-ice, is short and
bulky, varying from a pale yellowish-green on the under side to a dark
greenish-brown on the back. Its neck is ample and bloated, and when
distended in excitement reminds one of a pouter-pigeon. This rare seal
appears to subsist mainly on squid and jelly-fish.

The sea-leopard, the only predacious member of the seal family, has an
elongated agile body and a large head with massive jaws. In general it
has a mottled skin, darker towards the back. It lives on fish, penguins
and seals. Early in April, Hurley and McLean were the first to obtain
proof that the sea-leopard preyed on other seals. Among the broken
floe-ice close beneath the ice-cliffs to the west of Winter Quarters,
the wind was driving the dead body of a Weddell seal which swept
past them, a few yards distant, to the open water. Then it was that
a sea-leopard was observed tearing off and swallowing great pieces of
flesh and blubber from the carcase.

The last variety of hair seal, the sea elephant, varies considerably
from the preceding. Reference has already been made to the species
earlier in the narrative. The habitat of these monstrous animals ranges
over the cold, south-temperate se