6o4 CARNIVORA 



Two species of seals only are met with regularly on the British 

 coasts, the Common Seal and the Gray Seal. The former (Fig. 

 277) is a constant resident in all suitable localities round the 

 Scottish, Irish, and English coasts, from which it has not been 

 driven away by the molestations of man. Although, naturally, 

 the most secluded and out-of-the-way spots are selected as their 

 habitual dwelling-places, there are few localities where they may 

 not be occasionally met with. Within the writers' knowledge one 

 was seen not many years ago lying on the shingly beach at so 

 populous a place as Brighton, and another was caught in the river 

 Welland, near Stamford, 30 miles from the sea. They frequent 

 bays, inlets, and estuaries, and are often seen on sandbanks or 

 mudflats left dry at low tide, and, unlike some of their congeners, 

 are not found on the ice-floes of the open sea, nor, though 

 gregarious, are very large numbers ever seen in one spot. The 

 young are produced at the end of May or beginning of June. 

 They feed chiefly on fish, and the destruction they occasion among 

 salmon is well known to Scottish fishermen. The Common Seal is 

 widely distributed, being found not only on the European and 

 American coasts bordering the Atlantic Ocean, but also in the 

 Xorth Pacific. It is from 4 to 5 feet in length, and variable in 

 colour, though usually yellowish-gray, with irregular spots of dark 

 brown or black above and yellowish -white beneath. The Gray 

 Seal (Halichcerus grypus) is of considerably larger size, the males 

 attaining when fully adult a length of 8 feet from nose to end of 

 hind feet. It is of a yellowish-gray colour, lighter beneath, and 

 with dark gray spots or blotches, but, like most other Seals, is 

 liable to great variations of colour according to age. This species' 

 appears to be restricted to the North Atlantic, having been rarely 

 seen on the American coasts, but not farther south than Nova 

 Scotia ; it is chiefly met with on the coasts of Ireland, England, 

 Scotland, Norway, and Sweden, including the Baltic and Gulf of 

 Bothnia, and Iceland, though it does not appear to range farther 

 north. It is apparently not migratory, and its favourite breeding- 

 places are rocky islands ; the young being born in the end of 

 September or beginning of October. 



Subfamily Monaehina?. — Incisors -§. Cheek-teeth two-rooted, 

 except the first. On the hind feet the first and fifth toes greatly 

 exceeding the others in length, with nails rudimentary or absent. 



Monackus. 1 — Dentition: i f, c -£, p -f-, m \; total 32. Crowns 

 of molars strong, conical, compressed, hollowed on the inner side, 

 with a strongly marked lobed cingulum, especially on the inner side, 

 and slightly developed accessory cusps before and behind. The 

 first and last upper and the first lower molar considerably smaller 

 than the others. Vertebra?: C 7, D 15, L 5, S 2, C 11. All the 

 1 Fleming, Philosophy of Zoology, vol. ii. p. 187 (1822). 



