124 ALASKA. 



it may be truly said to step with its fore flippers, for tliey regu- 

 larly alternate as it moves up, carrying the bead well above 

 them, at least three feet from the ground, with a perfectly erect 

 neck. 



The fore feet, or hands, are a pair of dark bluish-black flip- 

 pers, about 8 or 10 inches broad at their junction with the 

 body, running out to an ovate point some 15 to 18 inches from 

 this union, which is at the carpal joint, corresponding to our 

 wrist; all the rest of the fore-arm, the ulna, radius, and 

 humerus, being concealed under the skin and thick blubber 

 folds of the main body and neck, concealed entirely at this 

 season when it is so ftit ; but later, when flesh or fat has been 

 consumed by absorption, they come quite plainly into view. 



On the upper side of these flippers, the hair straggles down 

 finer and fainter, as it comes down to a point close to and 

 slightly beyond where the phalanges and the metacarpal bones 

 are jointed, similar to the spot where our knuckles are placed, 

 and there ends, leaving the skin bare and wrinkled in places at 

 the margin of the inner side, showing five small pits containing 

 abortive nails, which are situated immediately over the union 

 of the phalanges with their cartilaginous continuations to the 

 end of the flipi^er. 



On the under side of the flipper the skin is entirely bare from 

 the end up to the body connection, deeply and regularly wrin- 

 kled with seams and furrows, which cross one another, so as to 

 leave a kind of sharp diamond-pattern. 



But we observe as the seal moves along that, though it han- 

 dles its fore limbs in a most creditable manner, it brings up its 

 rear in quite a different style ; for after every second step ahead 

 with the fore feet it arches its spine, and with it drags and lifts 

 together the hinder limbs to a fit position under its body for 

 another movement forward, by which the spine is again straight- 

 ened out so as to take a fresh hitch up on the posteriors. This 

 is the leisurely and natural movement on land when not dis- 

 turbed, the body being carried clear of the ground. 



The radical difl'erence in the form and action of the hinder 

 feet cannot fail to strike the eye at once. They are one-seventh 

 longer and very much lighter and more slender; they, too, are 

 merged in the body like those anterior; nothing can be seen of 

 the leg above the tarsal joint. 



The shape of this hind flipper is strikingly like a human foot, 

 provided the latter were drawn out to a length of 20 or 22 



