148 CARNIVORES. 



leave the young, the old males and young proceed inland, as far as two miles 

 sometimes, and stop without food for more than a month, and during this time 

 lose fat. The male sea-elephants come on shore on the Crozets for the breeding- 

 season at about the middle of August, the females a little later." 



Seal-Hunting. 



Although incidental mention has been made here and there of the annual 

 catch of various species of the true seals, nothing has yet been said as to the 

 various modes in which these animals are captured. The chief sealing districts, 

 or, as they are technically called, " sealing -grounds," in the Arctic and North 

 Atlantic oceans are West Greenland, the Newfoundland district, the Jan-Mayen 

 seas, Novaia Zemlia and the Kara Sea, the White Sea, and the Caspian. The 

 most important of these is the Jan-Mayen area, where, as in all the other districts 

 except the Caspian, the Greenland seal is the species mainly hunted. So incessant 

 and unremitting has been seal-hunting in the icy Jan-Mayen seas that the numbers 

 of these animals have been very sensibly diminished ; and as far back as 1871 

 attention was called to the necessity of some stringent regulations being applied 

 to the sealing trade. This was followed in 1876 by an enactment on the part of 

 the British Government establishing a close-time for seals, so far as their own 

 subjects were concerned ; and not long after similar action was taken by the other 

 governments interested. 



The chief sealing-trade in the North Pacific was the capture of the elephant- 

 seals on the Californian coast — a trade which has of necessity come to an end by 

 the extermination of the object of pursuit. In the more southern seas the trade 

 was likewise confined to the capture of elephant-seals. From their great numerical 

 abundance and their large size, the pursuit of these animals was an extremely 

 lucrative occupation in the early years of this century. Now, however, as we have 

 seen, these seals are exterminated from most of their former haunts, and only 

 remain in any numbers on Kerguelen and Heard Islands, where they would also 

 long since have disappeared had it not been for the inaccessible nature of the 

 beaches they frequent. Consequently, the southern sealing-trade has now shrunk 

 to an inappreciable fraction of its former volume, although there is a prospect of 

 its being revived in the neighbourhood of the Antarctic pack-ice. 



_ Of the various methods of capturing seals in the northern seas 



Harpooning. l to 



notably the oldest is that of harpooning from canoes, or kayaks, as 

 now practised by the Eskimo. The kayak, which is made of skins, although 

 upwards of eighteen feet in length, is so light as to be easily carried in the hand. 

 In " sealing " the victim is approached within some twenty-five feet, when the harpoon 

 is hurled from a wooden "thrower." The harpoon, in addition to its line, is 

 furnished with a bladder attached by another cord, which marks the course of 

 the seal while below the water, and enables the hunter to follow its track and 

 wound it with his lance time after time as it comes to the surface to breathe, 

 until it is finally despatched. The lance, it should be observed, is thrown 

 from the hand, and, after striking the seal, always detaches itself and floats on the 

 surface. 



