TOOTH AND FUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 103, 2 May 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

TOOTH AND FUR.

By E. G. TURBOTT.

LIFE OF A SEA-LION.

SEALS are carnivorous: sea beasts of prey. Some have visible ears, also can turn their hind feet forward, using them to walk on land; and furthermore have fine fur which is scattered throughout with longer, coarser hair. Others have no ears to be seen; they cannot turn forward their feet, which are •stretched out behind, and are covered with short hair, which is little sought a fter by the furrier.

This should give you the idea that there are two groups of seals. This is so, and as it happens the two divisions have been called, respectively, the families "Otariidae" (eared seals, including "fur seals" and "sea-lions") and "Phocidae" ("hair seals." sought after only for their blubber— and sealskin, for leather).

Look up your history, where you will find that among the earliest

■white men in ■ New' Zealand were "sealers."

These men killed the seals' for their fur, so you will think it likely that the New Zealand seals were not hair seals, but eared fur seals. This is so, the important New Zealand seals being two kinds of fur seal native to New Zealand —the sea-lion or wak'aha (Arctocephalus hookeri) and the fur seal of Kekeno (A. forsteri). At The Aucklands. Wakaha, the sea-lion, is still common at the Auckland Islands, which you will find 200 miles south of Stewart Island on the map. Thd Auckland Islands are the only group among these lonely southern lands where we may find true forest. Dr. Cockayne has described the scene: "Lands of mist and sleet and hail, of fierce squalls born in the icy south; cruel, 'rock-bound coasts, scenes of brave men's deaths or of fierce struggles with the angry sea; lands of brown hills, enclosed by thick woods, weird and grotesque—in very truth goblin forests, patrolled and sentinelled by uncouth monster? of the deep: such impression may our far-off sub-Antarctic islands give at first.