122 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Soctety. 
Edinburgh taxidermists for preservation. They are then in 
the white or ermine state. Of between twenty and thirty 
examined by me during the winter 1890-91, only two 
or three—obtained near Lauder and Gorebridge in the end 
of January and February—had changed colour completely ; 
all the others were more or less brown on the upper part of 
the head and neck, and many of them had also a dorsal line 
of the same colour, but much paler, owing to a large 
admixture of white hairs. 
HaALicna@rus Grypus (Fabr.). GREY SEAL. 
This large Seal is well known in fluctuating numbers at 
the mouth of the Tay, whence Professor Turner has received 
specimens; and though I cannot point to a record of its 
actual capture in the waters of the Forth, there can be no 
doubt it has frequently visited, if indeed it does not habitually 
frequent, the seaward portion of that firth as well. The 
discovery of bones, identified by Dr M‘Bain as belonging to 
this species, in a kitchen-midden on Inchkeith, proves it to 
have been an inhabitant of the firth in former times (Proce. 
Soc. Antig. Scot., 1x., p. 453). 
So long ago as 1841, Selby recorded, in the Annals and 
Magazine of Natural History, the plentiful occurrence of the 
Grey Seal on the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumber- 
land; and the late Mr Robert Walker, in an interesting 
article on the species contributed to the Scottish Naturalist 
for 1875 (vol. iii., p. 158), expressed the opinion that it was 
then the Seal most commonly met with on the east coast of 
Scotland, but I scarcely think this is the case now, whatever 
it may have been at that time. “It may be seen,” he says, 
“all the year through at the mouth of the Tay, and along 
by the Carr Rock chiefly in summer. In autumn they 
congregate in great force in the vicinity of the banks of the 
Tay. These banks form a favourite resting place for them 
when the tide is out, as many as twenty having been counted 
at atime. In 1863 six specimens of this seal were caught 
in the salmon nets at Tentsmuir, some of them large animals, 
and all more or less ferocious and difficult to secure. The 
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