552 FAMILY PHOCID^E. 



bulks are from one to two miles apart ; care is also taken that 

 flags are stuck up as a guide to direct the men where to find such 

 bulked seals. So uncertain is the weather and precarious the 

 shifting about of the ice, as well as heavy falls of snow and 

 drift, that very often such bulked seals are never seen again by 

 the men that killed and bulked them, as the vessels and steam- 

 ships are frequently driven by gales of wind far out of sight or 

 reach of them, and frequently wheeled or driven into another 

 spot, where the men again commence killing and bulking as 

 before. In many instances it has happened that the crews of 

 vessels, as well as the crews of steamships, have killed and 

 bulked twice their load. No doubt seals that are bulked are 

 often picked up by the crews of other vessels, but such is the 

 law, that as long as the flags are erected upon the bulks, and 

 the vessel or steamship is in sight, no man can take them, not- 

 withstanding the vessel's or steamship's men that bulked them 

 may be ten miles away from them, whilst another vessel may be 

 driven within a. quarter of a mile of the thousands of bulked 

 seals, but owing to the law dare not take them." Sometimes af- 

 ter Seals are bulked heavy gales of wind spring up, driving the 

 vessels or steamships that claim them, as well as any others in the 

 vicinity, twenty or thirty miles from them, and they are thus 

 lost. "Ice-hunting masters make it a rule to have the seals 

 bulked on large flat pans." In tljis way the skins are damaged 

 by exposure to the weather, being injured by severe frosts, as 

 well as by the sun, so that " between frost and sun thousands 

 of seal skins are rendered valueless." Loss also often happens 

 by the capsizing of the pan of ice on which the skins are piled, 

 and u the seals are never seen afterwards " this forming the 

 " greatest evil known to ice-huuters." In the spring of 1871, 

 about four miles to the south of Bonavista Cape, there were 

 three pans of ice, marked by flags, on which were piled not less 

 than four thousand seals, but owing to the severity of the 

 weather the men from the shore could not reach them. Owing 

 to the heavy sea and bad weather none of them were ever 

 obtained, as the pans passed over the Flower Eocks upon which 

 the seals were ground to pieces. In the spring of 1872, some 

 five thousand seals, obtained to the westward of Bonavista by 

 the inhabitants of that place, were heaped upon the ice. " There 

 were thirteen flags to be seen in the morning over bulked 

 seals, and when the drift ice struck the land in the evening only 

 six of the flags were visible, the ice having rafted over both 



