i ae 
IN THE SHETLANDS 285 
I think, indeed, it is the larger animal of the two. 
I can make these comparisons, for both are here 
together now, and they continue for hour after hour 
to haunt the pool; but whilst he of the bottle-nose 
rises always at his long intervals and soon goes down, 
the knight of the leopard comes up at as short, or 
even shorter ones than the common seal does, and 
sometimes stays for a longer time, as witness these 
twelve successive appearances, with their correspond- 
ing disappearances, which I timed, partly to know, and 
partly to feel scientific: from 11.44 to 11.48; from 
11.50} to 11.5323; from 11.55 to 12; from 12.1} to 
12.54; from. 12.72 to 12.11 ; from 12.14 to 12.173 ; 
from 12.20 to 12.24; from 12.253 to 12-304; from 
12.32 to 12.3743 from 12.44 to 12.49; from 12.502 
£012.55. 
Also, though he often pegtops it, he has never yet 
pointed his nose straight up into the sky, which my 
bottle-nosed seal invariably does. Generally he soon 
adopts the horizontal attitude, and continues in it for 
the rest of the time he is up. When he goes down, 
he rolls round, as well as over—by which I mean both 
like a porpoise and like a barrel—and then his spotted, 
or rather blotched, belly makes a splendid mosaic 
under the water, for it is not only itself, which were 
enough of beauty, but the most lovely glaucous 
green is flung upon it, through which, all glorified, 
the pattern appears. A magnificent sight! “The very 
phenix!” Poor Bottle-nose is quite eclipsed. 
This great beauty of the skin—which, strange to 
