[Illustration: _Photo by J. W. McLellan_] [_Highbury._
Note the difference between the seal's and the sea-lion's hind flippers. When on land, the seal advances by a jumping movement, produced by the muscles of the body, assisted forward by the front flippers.]
In the records of the voyage of the _Challenger_ it is stated that there were still great numbers of the elephant-seals surviving near Heard Island, and not a few round the shores of Kerguelen Island. Professor Moseley states that on the windward shore of Heard Island "there is an extensive beach, called Long Beach. This was covered with thousands of sea-elephants in the breeding-season; but it is only accessible by land, and then only by crossing two glaciers. No boat can safely land on this shore; consequently men are stationed on the beach, and live there in huts. Their duty is constantly to drive the sea-elephants from this beach into the sea, which they do with whips made out of the hides of the seals themselves. The beasts thus ousted swim off, and often 'haul up,' as the term is, upon the accessible beach beyond. In very stormy weather, when they are driven into the sea, they are forced to betake themselves to the sheltered side of the island. Two or three old males, which are called 'beach-masters,' hold a beach for themselves and cover it with cows, but allow no other males to haul up. They fight furiously, and one man told me that he had seen an old male take a young one up in his teeth and throw him over, lifting him in the air. The males show fight when whipped, and are with great difficulty driven into the sea. The females give birth to their young soon after their arrival. The new-born young ones are almost black, unlike the adults, which are of a light slate-brown. They are suckled by the female for some time, and then left to themselves, lying on the beach, where they seem to grow fat without further feeding. They are always allowed by the sealers to lie like this, 'in order to make more oil.' This account was corroborated by all the sealers I met, but I do not understand it. Probably the cows visit their offspring unobserved from time to time. Péron says that both parent elephant-seals stay with the young without taking any food at all till the latter are about six or seven weeks' old, and that the old ones conduct the young to the water and carefully keep them company. The rapid increase in weight is in accordance with Péron's account. Goodridge gives a somewhat different story--namely, that after the females leave the young the old males and the pups proceed inland, as far as two miles sometimes, and stop without food for more than a month, during which time they lose fat. The male sea-elephants come ashore for the purpose of breeding about the middle of August, the females a little later."