692 HALICHCEKUS GRYPUS GRAY SEAL. 



neck. A female from Sealand is whitish-gray, with large ob- 

 scure spots of darker and touches of dusky. Mr. Ball says 

 that the color varies greatly in different individuals, and that 

 of the many specimens he had seen he did not remember " that 

 any two were precisely similar". He describes an adult female 

 as appearing of a uniform silvery-gray when seen from the 

 front, but when viewed from the rear seemed of a sooty-brown 

 color, while the spots or blotches were only distinctly visible 

 from a side view. He says, "The very young females are gen- 

 erally of a dull yellowish white, with rather long hair, which 

 falls off in about six weeks after birth, and gives place to a 

 shorter and more shining coat of a warm, dingy yellow, va- 

 riously blotched with blackish gray; the whole becoming grad- 

 ually more dull, the blotching more indistinct, and a general 

 dark shade spreading on the back as the animals advance in 

 age." He describes a young male which " has long yellowish 

 hair slightly tinged with brownish black on the back ; is black 

 on the nose, chin, and cheeks, and on the palms of the fore- 

 feet."* He gives the length of a skeleton of u a very aged 

 female" as "seven feet two inches ".t Selby, who observed 

 the species at the Farn Islands, gives the length of the full- 

 grown male as eight feet and the color as dark gray, or nearly 

 black, and says the female is smaller and greenish-white, 

 sparsely spotted with darker ; the young as yellowish-white, 

 changing to gray at the first moult, j: Hall grim sson makes the 

 same observations in relation to the Utselur of Iceland, which 

 he identifies with the Phoca grypus of Fabricius, stating that 

 the males are not only larger than the females, but are black- 

 ish-gray, or sometimes wholly black, while the females are 

 lighter colored; and adds that the new-born young are covered 

 with a white woolly coat. Mlsson describes a young female, 

 about four feet long, taken in August, as silver-gray marbled 

 or irregularly spotted above, on the sides and on the limbs 

 with black, most numerously on the sides and limbs ; below 

 white, with scattered spots of black. Another young female, 

 about three and a half feet long, killed in July, as pale ash- 

 gray above, varied with blackish or dusky spots; the sides, 

 limbs, and under parts white. Another young female, about 



* Trans. Roy. Irish Acad., vol. xviii, 1837, p. 90. 

 t Bell's Hist. Brit. Quad., 1837, p. 283. 

 fAnn. Nat. Hist., vol. vi, 1841, p. . 

 Isis, 1841, p.^291. 



