IN THE SHETLANDS pg 
the way that all illustrations persist in depicting them 
as lying. Three are absolutely on their backs, with 
their faces, or rather chins, looking, for long periods, 
straight up into the sky ; others are almost as supine, 
but, by turning their faces sideways, seem to be less 
so, whilst the rest vary between this and full on their 
side, in which position they look much like a huge 
salmon lying on a fishmonger’s dresser. Who has 
ever drawn seals like this? Where is there such 
a rendering? Always, as far as I can remember, they 
are made to lie on their stomachs. Yet here is the 
living thing. 
As various as their attitudes seems to be the 
degree of their rest. Some raise their heads and look 
to this side or that, at irregular intervals that are not 
very long apart. Others seem sunk in deep and 
heavy slumber, their very attitudes—or rather, 
their attitudes more than anything else—expressing 
“the rapture of repose that’s there.” Yet even these, 
if watched for long enough, are seen occasionally to 
raise their heads, or scratch themselves lazily with 
their front paws, or expand or interlace their hind 
ones, moving them sometimes in a very curious 
manner suggesting the rotating screw of a steamer. 
It would seem, therefore, that, however fast asleep 
they may look, they are really only in a sort of 
doze. 
Many of these seals are scarred and marked in 
a very bad way; raw and bleeding the places are 
sometimes, and I notice here and there what looks 
