700 HALICHCERUS GRYPUS GRAY SEAL. 



with soft, whitish-yellow woolly hair ; this it gradually loses,, 

 and does not enter the water till the moult is wholly completed, 

 at which time it is four or five weeks old, During the time the 

 young are lying upon the dry land they do not leave their 

 places, but every tide their mothers crawl up to them to suckle 

 them. Sometimes the females leave their young so near the 

 sea that the waves reach them, and by the spring- tides they 

 are swept along and carried helpless from one rock to another,, 

 for while the milk-hair is worn the young Seal is able to swim 

 but little and is still less able to dive. In this condition it is 

 called by the Icelanders Sjovelkjingur (Sea-rover); such un- 

 fortunates are weak and emaciated, while those that have 

 remained undisturbed are fat and well conditioned. These are 

 called Yolselr. The young is fattest when it is 'half ready \ 

 that is to say when it has lost the milk-hair from the head and 

 feet; but later it becomes poorer, because the mother then 

 allows it to get hungry, in order to induce it to leave its resting 

 place and go into the sea. This happens about the end of the 

 third week of winter (middle of November) or a little later ; 

 consequently the young are found to be best for killing when 

 three weeks old. The Utsel is blackish-gray ; some are entirely 

 pure black, especially the males; the females are somewhat 

 lighter. It has a long nose and a big head, which in the old 

 males appears as if it were angular. These have a fierce aspect 

 and are very irritable and quarrelsome. They often fight with 

 each other on the shore, and bite so powerfully that they retire 

 from the conflict bleeding and mangled. They are also danger- 

 ous to the men who hfLnt them on the shore if they approach 

 carelessly, which they therefore must always do from the side. 



" Eespecting the age to which this species of Seal attains I 

 can say nothing that can be positively relied upon ; yet they 

 apparently live to be very old. But I know with certainty that 

 the period of pregnancy continues for nine months." * 



Mr. Selby has given a very interesting account of his obser- 

 vations on the Gray Seal as observed at the Farn Islands, t 

 based on his own frequent visits to these islands, and also on 

 " the long experience of a respectable individual, now upwards 



* Isis, 1841, pp. 291, 292, originally published in Kr^yer's Naturhist.- 

 Tidsskrift, Band ii, Heft i, 1837, pp. 97, 98. 



t "Observations on the Great Seal of the Farn Islands, showing it to be the 

 Halichcerus griseus, Nilss., and not the Phoca barbcita." By P. J. Selby, Esq., 

 F. L. S., &c., &c. <Annals and Magazine, of Natural History, vol. vi, 

 1841, pp. 462-466. 



