38 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



yard or two from it. There they Avill often remain, if 

 undisturbed, for six hours ; that is, until the returning tide 

 floats them off the rock. As for the sweet melody, 

 " so melting soft," that must depend much on the ear and 

 musical taste of the listener. I have never heard a seal 

 utter any vocal sounds but a porcine grunt, a plaintive 

 moan, and a pitiful whine. But another habit of the seals 

 has, probably more than anything else, caused them to be 

 mistaken for semi-human beings — namely, that of poising 

 themselves upright in the water with the head and the 

 upper third part of the body above the surface. 



One calm sunny morning in August, l88i, a fine schooner- 

 yacht, on board of which I was a guest, was slowly gliding 

 out of the mouth of the river Maas, past the Hook of 

 Holland, into the North Sea, when a seal rose just ahead 

 of us, and assumed the attitude above described. It waited 

 whilst we passed it, inspecting us apparently with the 

 greatest interest ; then dived, swam in the direction in 

 which we were sailing, so as to intercept our course, and 

 came up again, sitting upright as before. This it repeated 

 three times, and so easily might it have been taken for a 

 mermaid, that one of the party, who was called on deck to 

 see it, thought, at first, that it was a boy who had swam off 

 from the shore to the vessel on a begging expedition. 



Laing, in his account of a voyage to the North, mentions 

 having seen a seal under similar circumstances. 



A young seal which was brought from Yarmouth to the 

 Brighton Aquarium in 1873, habitually sat thus, showing 

 his head and a considerable portion of his body out of 

 water. His bath was so shallow in some parts that he was 

 able to touch the bottom, and, with his after-flippers tucked 

 under him, like a lobster's tail, and spread out in front, he 

 would balance himself on his hind quarters, and look in- 



