74 COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF 



their mental constitution, by an interesting inci- 

 dent of which he was a witness, and which, with 

 several other anecdotes, we can, through his polite 

 attention, record in his own words. " A little islet 

 in Orkney, called the Holm of Papa Westray^ had 

 long been a favourite haunt of numerous Seals, 

 which had become more than usually tame from the 

 care of the proprietor of the adjoining island to pre- 

 vent their being molested. On visiting that gen- 

 tleman in 1833, I found the Seals exhibited their 

 wonted confidence in those who approached their 

 protected haunt. Several of them swam along the 

 shore as a party of six or eight persons walked along 

 the beach, and did not in general keep farther from 

 us than thirty or forty yards : when we turned, so 

 did they, and when we re-entered our boat, they 

 followed it in the narrow channel that divides Holm 

 from the island of Papa. Seals are said to relish 

 music, and a Seal-hunter once informed me that the 

 sound of a flute will allure them to a boat : but in 

 the above Instance it was merely the consequence of 

 no gun being ever lifted against them in that islet, 

 which has won their confidence in man." Nor is 

 this characteristic less strikingly exemplified by an 

 observation made by Mr Dunbar, the present in- 

 cumbent of the parish of Applegarth, during his re- 

 sidence, at a former period, in one of the Hebrides. 

 In a letter to Mr Lizars, which appeared in the last 

 volume of the Naturalist's Library, we find the fol- 

 lowing statement : " While my pupils and I were 

 bathing, which we often did, in the bosom of a 



