546 FAMILY PHOCIDJE. 



In addition to the above, the Caspian Seal (Phoca caspica) is 

 extensively hunted in the Caspian Sea, and Sea-Elephants on 

 the coast of Lower California and in the Antarctic seas. 



ABUNDANCE OF SEALS AT PARTICULAB LocALiTiES.^Ee- 

 specting the abundance of Seals, particularly at certain localities, 

 and the ease with which they are taken, a few excerpts may 

 here be added to the various incidental references to the subject 

 already made in the general account of Seal-hunting. Mr. H. Y. 

 Hind states that " On March 24, 1857, large ice-fields, driven 

 by the !N. and N. W. wind, grounded on the coast of Amherst 

 Island, one of the Magdalen group, and were found to be a 

 vast i seal meadow.' Not less than 4,000 of these animals, nearly 

 all young, were killed in five days." * 



Drs. Koldewey and Pansch, of the German Arctic Expedition 

 of 1869-70, make the following statement : 



" The whitish colored young stay on the ice the first few days, 

 and are then killed with clubs by the parties of seal-hunters. 

 . . . The number caught by a single Bremen ship now some- 

 times amounts to 8 to 10,000 seals ; and one may form some idea 

 of the war of destruction waged against these harmless crea- 

 tures by man, when we hear that of European ships in 1868, five 

 German, five Danish, fifteen Norwegian, and twenty-two British, 

 which were in company in West Greenland, obtained 237,000." t 



Mr. Robert Brown states that in the Spitzbergen Sea, the 

 Greenland Seals, at the time of bringing forth of the young, 

 "may be seen literally covering the frozen waste as far as the 

 eye can reach with the aid of a telescope from the l crow's nest' 

 at the main-royal masthead, and have, on such occasions, been 

 calculated to number upwards of half a million of males and 

 females."! It is little wonder that, at such times, but more 

 especially after the young are born and rest helplessly upon 

 the ice, a ship's crew will secure several hundreds in a single 

 day, and quickly fill their vessels with cargoes of ten thousand 



Seals. 



PRODUCTS. 



So much has been already said, incidentally, in relation to 

 the products of the Seals and their commercial importance 

 that little need here be added. Of chief importance is the 

 oil, so well known for its valuable properties for illuminating 



* Expl. iii Labrador, vol. ii, p. 207. 



t German Arct. Exped. 1889-70, Eng. ed., 1874, pp. 61, 62. 



t Proc. Zool. Soc. Lon. , 1838, p. 418. 



