646 PHOCA GRCENLANDICA HARP SEAL. 



masses of drift-ice from Baffin's Bay are moving southward 

 throughout the greater part of the year, nothing seems more 

 reasonable to believe than that the seals, having gone their 

 usual beat along the west coast of Greenland put to sea in 

 various latitudes ; iafter which, on crossing Davis Strait, they 

 almost every where will meet with the drift-ice, which they will 

 then follow on its course southward, and on returning they will 

 make the coast of Greenland at some more southerly point, 

 begin their usual migration, and so on."* Mr. Brown, however, 

 adds: "Every one knows when it commences its migration 

 from the south to the north, but nobody knows where the Seal 

 goes to when it disappears off the coast. Between the time 

 they leave the coast in the spring and return in the summer they 

 beget their young; and this seems to be accomplished on the 

 pack-ice a great distance from land, viz, in the Spitsbergen sea. 

 It is at this period that the seal-ships come after them. . . ." 



From what has been already stated respecting their pas- 

 sage southward at the beginning of winter along the Labrador 

 coast and the shores Of Newfoundland to the Grand Banks, 

 their subsequent movement northward at the beginning of 

 spring to the ice-floes to bring forth their young, and their 

 later migration northward, it seems safe to assume that the 

 Greenland division of these Seals resort mainly in winter to the 

 open waters of the Grand Banks, southeast of Newfoundland, 

 and that after the breeding season they return northward to 

 the Greenland coast; furthermore that the great herds that 

 congregate about Jan Ma yen belong mainly to the Arctic waters 

 of the Spitzbergeu sea, migrating northward and southward, 

 and more or less westward, with the changes of the season and 

 the position of the ice-fields, and that probably none of the 

 Seals of Baffin's Bay and adjoining waters migrate to the Jan 

 Mayen seas. 



As already stated the Harp Seals visit the southern coast of 

 Greenland in May, and appear on the more northern coast in 

 June. "Having visited," says Eink, "the fjords in numerous 

 herds, they again disappear in July and return in September, t 

 Consequently this seal deserts the coast twice a year, and as 

 regularly returns to it in due season, always first making its 



* Danish Greenland, etc., 1877, p. 125. 



t Mr. Brown says, "This Seal leaves the vicinity of Jakobshavn ice-fjord 

 about the middle of Jnly or beginning of August, and comes back in Oc- 

 tober very fat. In August and September there are none on that part of 

 the coast." 



