HABITS. 701 



<of eighty years of age, who succeeded his father, and contin- 

 ued to rent these islands till within the last eight or ten years. 

 From his 'account," continues Mr. Selby, "it appears that these 

 Seals were much more abundant some forty or fifty [now 

 eighty or ninety] years ago than they are now, which he partly 

 attributes to the great destruction he himself committed among 

 them (having been a first-rate Seal-hunter), and to the annoy- 

 ance they have since been subjected to by the erection of the 

 present outer lighthouse, which is built upon an island to 

 which they were in the habit of retiring to rest during the 

 recess of the tide. 



"In the year 1772, this old gentleman informs me that he 

 killed seventy-two young Seals, all of this species, and once 

 also killed fourteen old ones, in one day, upon the Crimst'on 

 Kock, the small island upon which they mostly calve, an event 

 that takes place, as I have previously observed, in the month 

 of November ; and as the rutting season begins about the last 

 week in February or first week in March, it would appear that 

 the period of gestation of the Halichcerus griseus is about eight 

 and a half or nine months. The young when first calved are 

 nearly three feet in length, and grow very rapidly till they 

 quit the rock and are able to follow their dams to the water, 

 which is generally about a fortnight after birth ; when first 

 calved they are covered with a longish soft woolly hair, of a 

 yellowish white or cream-colour, which gives place before they 

 quit the rock to a shorter hair of a grisly hue. If an oppor- 

 tunity offers, the young are sometimes tethered by a rope and 

 kept upon the rock a week or two beyond the usual time, in 

 order to get them of as large a size and as fat as possible before 

 they are slaughtered ; but this must not be persisted in too long, 

 otherwise the dams are apt to forsake or refuse to suckle them 

 at the stated times of tide. The food of Halichcerus consists 

 entirely of fish, not restricted, it is supposed, to any particular 

 species, though they show a great predilection for the Cyclo- 

 stoma lumpus (Lump-sucker), particularly to the female, which 

 there goes by the name of the Hush. . . . They swim with 

 great strength and rapidity, and are frequently submerged for 

 two or three minutes, during which they make great progress, 

 and re-appear many gunshots distant from the place where they 

 went down, and they seem to delight and sport in the rapid 

 and heavy currents which exist among the Islands. They show 

 great curiosity in gazing at anything strange, and will remain 



