258 THE BIRD WATCHER 
portly bottle-nose—ggre as under, viz., from 12.6 to 
12.15 ; from 12.164 to 12.26 ; from 12.27 to 12.364 ; 
from 12.374 to 12.48; from 4.26 to 4.39; from 4.40 
to 4.544; from 4.554 to 5.72; from 5.94 to 5.23; 
from 5.244 to 5.3743; from 5.384 to 5.513; from 
5.524 to 6.41; from 6.54 to 6.183. Thus only 
three out of a dozen of his subaqueous excursions 
was for less than ten minutes, the shortest one being 
for nine minutes and the longest for fourteen minutes 
and a half. His stays above water were of even more 
uniform duration, varying between a minute and 
a minute and a half, except in one instance where he 
stayed a minute and three quarters. An animal of 
regular habits, by my fay! No doubt the great bottle- 
nose can stay down longer on occasions if he wishes 
it, but as this is his usual period, it must, I suppose, 
be what he finds most comfortable; and the same 
should apply to every other kind of seal. The 
nostrils of this larger one have the appearance of 
being more highly developed than in the common 
species, and this may have something to do with his 
more prolonged submersions, if I may take what 1 
have seen in these two individuals as typical of their 
respective communities. 
Returning now to the common seal, what distin- 
guished him this afternoon from the bottle-nosed one 
was that, after he had come up and gone down again 
several times, he at last remained floating for half an 
hour or more in this perpendicular fashion, his head 
for the most part straight up in the air, whilst at 
