298 THE BIRD WATCHER 
remained all the whjlg he was up—which was never 
more than a minute—and then sank without altering 
it, differing in this last respect from the two larger 
seals, which always went down with a porpoise-like 
roll. His eyes were shut all the while, even when 
he went down, but still I supposed that, once beneath 
the surface, he was accustomed to swim away and 
enter upon some active employment “under the 
glassy, cool, translucent wave”: the line, indeed 
—which, by the way, with its exquisite context, is 
not to be found in that overpraised pert piece of 
ex cathedra dictation, The Golden Treasury—for the 
gold non o/et, but out on its many omissions and at 
least one vile, prudish mutilation !—hardly suits such 
a pot-boil as this haven now is; but it is always un- 
troubled in the deeps. But I was deceived in this 
supposition, for once he came sufficiently near to the 
great bulk of rock where I was lying for me to see 
him for some time before he rose; and, to my 
surprise, I saw that he was floating in just the same 
attitude, and just as quiescently. As he came up his 
eyes were fast closed, so that I think he must have 
been dozing, or sleeping, like this, under the water, 
all the while, yet rising—perhaps automatically—at 
the requisite intervals. The common seal, if it be 
not as nocturnal as the cat tribe, from which it may 
have descended, is certainly a very great sleeper. 
The eye of the puffin is, by virtue of its setting, 
almost as marked a feature as the beak itself. First 
it is surrounded by a ring of naked skin, much 
