230 THE BIRD WATCHER 
In spite of the shggtness of all their four limbs, 
yet seals, as they stretch themselves, throw up the 
head, bend the neck and back, raise their fore-feet 
into the air, or push out the hind ones to their full 
length whilst at the same time stretching them apart, 
often have a very startling resemblance to a man. 
The curves and symmetries of the body—especially 
the upper portion of it—are sometimes wonderfully 
suggestive of the human torso, and the resemblance 
is often helped by the shape of the rock, which, by 
curving away from the body, allows the lines of it to 
appear. Nothing, in fact, can look both more like 
and more unlike a man than do these creatures. See 
one lying quiescent, a great, swollen, carrot-shaped 
bladder, and one may scoff at the possibility of 
any such resemblance ; but wait and watch, and in 
a hundred odd ways one will catch it. When a seal 
scratches one of his front flippers it is wonderfully 
like a man scratching the back of one hand with the 
other. The hind feet can look almost more hand- 
like. It is true that when the toes are distended 
to their full width the whole foot is just like a fish’s 
tail in shape, but when they are not stretched so 
widely apart, and those of the one play, as they often 
do, with those of the other, then they have a wonder- 
ful resemblance to fingers—swollen, gouty fingers, 
it is true; gloved, too, they look—but still fingers. 
Another interesting sight now in the adjoining 
cove, or rather in the adjoining half of this semi- 
divided one! A seal comes to its rock there before 
