332 THE BIRD WATCHER 
lain there before. dso, I can only account for his 
inability to get on to it on this occasion by supposing 
that it was not a sufficiently high tide, though, at the 
last, the waves, when they washed up to their highest 
point, were quite on a level with the point of rock. It 
certainly seems curious that he could not manage it, 
even then ; but such great longing and striving must, 
I think, have been for a pleasure known and tasted. 
I have ascribed this seal’s biting of the rock to irri- 
tation, as those other actions which so well became 
him, and which I have very inadequately described, 
certainly were due to this. But another explanation 
is possible here. I have several times seen seals, when 
on the rocks, take the long brown seaweed, growing 
upon them, into their mouths, in such a manner as to 
make me think it might have been to pull themselves 
along by, as one would use a rope fixed at one end. 
However, I could never be sure whether it was for 
this or any other practical purpose, or only sportively, 
that it was laid hold of. But now, if seaweed is ever 
really used by seals in this way—to pull themselves 
along the rocks, that is to say, or to hoist themselves 
up on to them, then a strong growth of it here would 
have been most useful to this much-striving one, so 
that it may have been with an idea of this sort, though 
not amounting to more than a regret—an “Oh if 
there were only!” sort of feeling—that he bit upon 
the rock. If so, he showed another human touch, for 
the nakedness of this particular rock, and especially of 
this point of it that he had been so often nearly up 
