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CHAPTER XXX] 
AN ALL-DAY SITTING 
Per RES all-day sitting with the seals. From 
the edge of the cliffs in the morning, and in the 
same pool by which I had sat all yesterday, I saw a 
creature which | at first thought was a seal of the 
common kind, then—for it began to look larger—that 
it was the bottle-nosed one, but which soon proved 
to be neither the one nor the other. In size it 
looked equal to Bottle-nose, if not even larger, but 
it had a magnificent skin, the whole of the under- 
surface, as well as the sides, being blotched and 
spotted black and white, like a leopard’s or jaguar’s, 
except that the markings are larger. In heaven’s 
name, now, what creature is this? Can it be the 
sea-leopard that I have often read about, but of 
whose habitat, etc., I know nothing till I can look 
it up again ’—the state of many a naturalist in regard 
to many a species, sometimes, perhaps, but shortly 
before he writes a treatise upon it. Upon coming 
down, now, and watching it closely, I see that in 
shape and general appearance—except for its wonder- 
ful skin—it is very like the bottle-nosed seal. Its 
body, however, is not so cylindrical, but bulges out 
into a greater roundness below the neck and shoulders, 
so that its weight may be somewhat greater. Its 
nose looks broader, and nearly, if not quite, as long. 
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