SAND DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



are so wonderfully decorated with small 

 round spots that they suggest at once a leop- 

 ard. This variation in colors occurs among 

 both the males and the females, the young and 

 the old, and one may see a small seal of a uni- 

 form silvery gray, and a large one leopard- 

 spotted, and vice versa. I knew one old silver- 

 gray fellow with great mustachios, who pre- 

 sented a singularly festive appearance, for a 

 wreath of dark spots was disposed around his 

 wrinkled neck. Another, a very dark individ- 

 ual, possessed a grayish white face that gave 

 him a weird and at the same time a comical 

 expression. Many of these sea-leopards are 

 of a beautiful yellowish-olive hue, spotted 

 with black, while others look decidedly green- 

 ish with gray spots, and others still are most 

 striking in a coat of nearly pure white, orna- 

 mented with large round spots. 



I said that the seals managed by hook or 

 by crook to get up on to the bar, and, if one 

 did not know that they were such experts in 

 the water, one would pity their distressingly 

 crippled methods of locomotion on land. The 

 young seals habitually use their fore-flippers, 

 generally together, rarely alternately, to haul 

 themselves along, aiding their progress at the 



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