Volume 23, Plate XII / Mammalia (Mammals)

Leopard Seal

Phoca Leopardina

1. The Leopard Seal. The Leopard Seal, the only specimen in Europe and taken in the Southern Ocean, has a very small produced head, a long tapering neck and a body largest at the middle, pale greyish above and yellowish below with the back spotted in pale white. Its small fore-paws bear sharp black grooved claws while the hind extremity has neither nails nor membrane, and it is known only from the South Orkneys and Shetland, its habits unrecorded.
2. The Monk Seal. The Monk Seal, probably the species best known to the ancients, grows ten to twelve feet long, clothed in short shining brown hair mixed with grey, with a large white belly-marking mounting the flanks, great ox-like brown eyes and only a minute ear-opening yet very acute hearing. Mild and intelligent, easily tamed to obey its keeper, it bellows hoarsely like a young bull, devours some thirty pounds of fish daily, and inhabits the southern shores of Europe.