740 CYSTOPHORA CRISTATA HOODED SEAL. 



sealers call it by this name, apparently learnt from the Dutch 

 and German sailors). All of these words mean the 'Seal with 

 a cap on/ and are derived from the Dutch, who style the frontal 

 appendage of this species a mutz or cap, hence the Scotch 

 mutch. This prominent characteristic of the Seal is also com- 

 memorated in various popular names certain writers have ap- 

 plied to it, such as Blas-Skal (Bladder-Seal) by Nilsson (Skand. 

 Faun., i, p. 312), [hence Blase-Robbe by various German writ- 

 ers,] Hooded Seal by Pennant (Synopsis, p. 342), Seal with a 

 caul by Ellis (Hudson Bay, p. 134), in the French vernacular 

 Phoque a capuchon, and in the sealers' name of Bladdernose, 

 Neitersocik, 9 Ncsaursalik (Greenland), and Kakortak (when 

 two years old).' 7 * 



HABITS. As already noted in the account of the geograph- 

 ical distribution of this species, it is, like the Harp Seal, pelagic 

 and migratory, preferring the drift ice of the "high seas" to 

 the vicinity of land, and seems rarely if ever to resort to rocky 

 islands or shores. It brings forth its young on the ice, remote 

 from the land, in March, a week or ten days later than the 

 Harp Seal, with which it appears only rarely to associate, 

 although the two species are often found on neighboring ice- 

 floes.t It is commonly described as the most courageous and 

 combative of the Phocids, often turning fiercely upon its pur- 

 suers. Dr. Eink states that its pursuit is hazardous to a man 

 in a frail kayak, and that its destruction is facilitated by the 

 use of the rifle, the hunter first shooting it from the ice-floes 

 and afterward dispatching it with the harpoon from the kayak. 

 Although it will pursue a man and bite him, Brown states that 

 "as long as the memory of the oldest inhabitant of South 

 Greenland extends, only one man in the district of Julianshaab 

 (where they are chiefly captured) has been killed by the bite of 

 the Klapmyds, though not unfrequently the harpoon and line 

 have been broken." Various writers speak of the difficulty of 

 killing it with the seal-club, and state that it is hard to kill 

 with the sealing-gun unless hit on the back of the neck behind 



*Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1868, pp. 435-436; Man. Nat. Hist. Greenland, 

 etc., Mam., p. 64. 



t Says Brown, "It is affirmed, curiously enough, that the Bladdernose and 

 the Saddleback are rarely or ever [sic] found together ; they are said to dis- 

 agree. At all events the latter is generally found on the inside of the 

 pack, while the former is on the outside." Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1868, p. 

 437; Man. Nat. Hist. Greenland, etc., Mam., p. 65. Jukes and Carroll, from 

 entirely independent observations, make substantially the same statement. 



