NOTES ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BELL ROCK. 37 



magneto-exploder, fired the charge, and, well he stopped 

 yawning and went away ! and his going was about the 

 smartest thing I ever witnessed. The force of the explosion, 

 being unconfined, merely tilted him on his side, but quickly 

 recovering himself he flopped into the water and shot seaward 

 through the gully like a flash, a black line under water 

 denoting his course. Rounding the outer end of the gully, he 

 doubled back on the outside of the reef, and when opposite 

 his original position, made his appearance on the surface, a 

 very much startled seal. His aspect was quite comical as he 

 stood, so to speak, on his tip-toes evidently investigating the 

 cause of his hurried departure. 



Several schools of porpoises have been seen this month, 

 presumably in pursuit of herring. To anyone who has seen 

 these animals gambolling in front of a ship's bows when 

 travelling at her best, the ease with which they maintain 

 their distance is a matter of surprise always on the point of 

 being run down, but ever ahead, snorting playfully as if in 

 derision at the possibility of their being overtaken by their 

 lumbering follower. Off the island of Anticosta, in the Gulf 

 of St Lawrence where these animals attain a size several 

 times larger than those of our home waters, and are of a cream 

 colour I had an interesting view of their manner of suckling 

 their young. I have seen it stated that the mother by 

 muscular compression expels the nutritive fluid, which is 

 absorbed by the young one as it floats to the surface. The 

 operation appeared to me to be one of actual contact. The 

 young one which, by the way, is of a slatey-blue colour 

 snuggling as close as possible to the mother as she lay some- 

 what on her side on the surface, all the while exhibiting the 

 tenderest solicitude for her offspring. Truly the one touch of 

 nature which makes the whole world kin. It is surprising to 

 learn the evolution these animals have undergone in order to 

 accommodate themselves to their altered circumstances. Land- 

 dwellers at one stage of the world's history, but acquiring a 

 taste for fish, they gradually became aquatic in their habits, 

 dispensing with such portions of their anatomy as were no 



