File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18157001192).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo13amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 259 extreme length. The fattest I saw was a bull eighteen feet four inches long, and so round and distended that it had the appearance of being pneumatic, and inflated under high pressure. Seven men could barely turn its body over with the aid of ropes and hand holes in its skin, even after half the blubber had been removed and a trench had been scooped under one side of the carcass. The blubber was a trifle less than eight inches thick in the center of the breast, and the brute yielded almost as much oil as a young sperm whale. I gained a good idea of the weight of a sea elephant by clean- ing up the skulls, for there was no man among the crew of the " Daisy" who could pick up and carry the head of a large bull until the hide and fat had been cut away from it. The question as to whether the greatest of the seal kind is to be preserved at South Georgia depends largely upon the results of an investigation of the status of whales, seals and penguins, now being conducted for the British Colonial Office. The difficulties and expenses of the fishery make it almost impossible for any species of whale to become completely extirpated, how- ever persistently it may be chased, but the unfortunate sea elephants have no such hope of preservation. Slow, unsuspicious, gregarious, they can be hunted profitably until the last one has gone to his ancestors and the calamity of the Antarctic fur seal is repeated.
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A spectacled albatross (Diomedea melanophrys) or "mollymoke." South Atlantic. These birds are less numerous at South Georgia than the great wandering albatross

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