58 CARNIVORA 



The Du Craig, a small islet off Kosyth Castle above 

 North Queensferry, has long been noted as a favourite 

 haunt of the Common Seal (vide, for instance, Fyfe's 

 " Summer Life on Land and Water at South Queensferry," 

 1851, p. 270). When visiting this rock on 5th July 1884, 

 for the purpose of identifying the terns which annually 

 resort to it to breed, I noticed a number of Seals, some of 

 which followed our boat at close quarters for a considerable 

 distance. 



The following extract from the Accounts of the Lord High 

 Treasurer of Scotland in the days of James IV., shows that 

 Seals then, as now, frequented the Isle of May, to which 

 that monarch was a frequent visitor: — " 1508 [8 Mar.] Item, 

 that day to the heremyt of Maij that brocht ane Selch to 

 the King .... xiiijs." (Stuart's " Eecords of the Priory 

 of the Isle of May," p. Ixxix). Sibbald, in his " History of 

 Fife and Kinross" (1710), mentions the Seal several times. 

 Many of the " Phoca, or Vitulus marinus, the Seal : our 

 fishers call it a Selch," he says, " frequent the coasts of these 

 two firths" {op. cit., ed. 1803, p. 114); and, speaking of the 

 Isle of May, he remarks that " many Seals are slain upon 

 the east side of it" (ib., p. 101). Quoting from a charter of 

 David I. to the Monastery of Dunfermline, Sibbald further 

 shows that Seals were a matter of trade in the twelfth 

 century (ih., p. 295).^ In Stark's "Picture of Edinburgh" 

 (1834), p. 322, we are told that "in the Firth of Forth the 

 Seal {Phoca vitulina) is continually showing its black head ; " 

 and in the "New Statistical Account" of Alloa (1840), it is 

 recorded that Seals "are constant inhabitants of the Forth 

 here." 



^ The words of the charter are: — " Et de seliches qui ad Kingornum 

 capientur, postquam decimati fuerint ; concede ut omnes septimos seliches 

 habeant." 



