40 Mr W. E. Cortnack on the Natural History and 



fipper. The other two kinds are the Blue Seal, so called from 

 its colour, which is as large as the Hooded Seal ; and the Jar 

 Seal, so named from its form resembling that of a jar, thick at 

 the shoulders, and tapering off suddenly towards the tail; head 

 small, body 4 or 5 feet long, the fur spotted, and it keeps more 

 in the water than the other ice-seals. These all differ from 

 the shore or harbour-seal (Phoca vitulina) of these coasts. The 

 ice-seals are alike migratory, and promiscuously gregarious ; they 

 \iiffer much in size, and the flesh of them all is very unpalateable, 

 unless to an acquired taste, more particularly that of the old 

 ones, differing in this respect from the flesh of the shore-seal, 

 some parts of which are very good. It remains to be pro- 

 ved, that some of the alleged differences in the ice-seals do not 

 arise from age. Although the ice-seals, which are sometimes 

 met with in herds of many leagues in extent on the ice, seem 

 to have no ordinary means of subsistence, yet the hand of un- 

 erring Providence maintains both old and young excessively 

 fat. The seal-hunters often find fresh capelin and other ani- 

 mal substances in their stomachs. 



Notwithstanding the apparently immense annual destruction 

 by man among the cod in these seas for more than two centu- 

 ries, it does not appear that their numbers are at all diminished, 

 or that their migrations are in any way affected : Nor is it hkely 

 that they ever will be, if we may judge from the migratory fishes 

 of Europe that have been persecuted for many more centuries, 

 between the North Cape and the South of England. 



It is not so, however, with those animals which man can pur- 

 sue in his own element ; — thus, the walrus and the penguin, 

 once abundant, may be said now to have entirely disappeared 

 from the Gulf of St Laurence. 



As the persecution of the seals in the field-ice increases, which 

 it has, every year since it commenced, it will be interesting to 

 observe, at some future day not far distant, the effect on their 

 numbers. It is not much more than thirty years since any 

 vessels ventured out among the ice at sea, purposely equipped 

 and manned for their destruction. 



The cod, the capelin, and the cuttle-fish, in their natural 

 connection, and the seal, or rather the cod and the seal, consti- 



