File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17973344420).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo15amer (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

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
354 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL
Text Appearing After Image:
The seal, somewhat conventionalized by Van the guise of "sea-lion" (1799) Brussel, and passing under as of equine shape.^ It is interesting to note that the figure of a horse is intro- duced by Sebastian Cabot in the Argen- tine region of his world-map of 1544, but this can scarcely be construed as evidence that native wild horses were seen by that navigator anywhere in South America. This view is, however, maintained by Sefior Anibal Cardoso in a recent memoir in the Anales of the Buenos Aires Mu- seum (vol. XV, 1912) on the origin of Argentine horses. In regard to the elephant-seal. Dr. R. Lydekker is authority for the state- ment that our first definite, if not actual, knowledge of this animal seems to have been derived from a specimen brought to England by Lord Anson in 1744 from the island of Juan Fernandez; and also from the figure and account given in the Voyage Round the World of that great commander, where the species is called "sea-lyon." It is, however, certain that Dampier in 1684, and Peter Kolben in 1705, also described the same creature (Macrorhyuchus leoninus L.). The former writes: I The most recent notices of this large mammal, Hippocamelus bisulcus, are those by J. A. Allen, in the Report of the Princeton Patagonian Expedi- tion (1906), and M. Neveu-Lamaire and G. Grandidier, in Les mammiferes des hauls plateaux de VAmerique du Sud (1911). Lydekker gives a colored plate of the guemul in Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1899. The Sea Lion is a large Creature about 12 or 14 foot long. The biggest part of the Body is as big as a Bull: It is shaped like a Seal, but 6 times as big. The Head is like a Lion's Head; it hath a broad Face with many long Hairs growing a- bout its Lips like a Cat. It has a great goggle Eye, the Teeth 3 Inches long, about the bigness of a Man's Thumb.... They have no Hair on their Bodies like the Seal; they are of a dun colour, and are all extraordinary fat."— Voyages, cap. iv. j Very important for the west coast of South America is Cieza de Leon's Cronica del Peru (1553). The Amster- dam edition of this work (1554) contains a fair illustration of the llama, an animal of the existence of which Europeans first became aware as early as 1513, through Balboa's intercourse with the Aztec chieftain Tumaco. Members of the llama race, of edentates, and many of the more characteristic Central and South American birds, mammals and even tropical vegetation, are represented with considerable fidelity in early six- teenth century cartography of the west-

Note About Images