HUNTING SEALS AND MORSES. 393 



COMMON SEAL. 



the islands are favorable for their basking, and fish are 

 abundant for their food. In the northern seas they resort to 

 the shores generally in the high latitudes ; but there also 

 they prefer the islands to the mainland. Among the Aleu- 

 tian islands, and in all the basin which lies between these 

 islands and Behring's Straits, the seals assemble in vast mul- 

 titudes; while those of the North Atlantic seek both the 

 shores of the northern islands and the borders of the ice. 



When they resort to the land there are some differences 

 of habit among them, especially among those of the south. 

 Some resort to the open sandy beaches ; others to the rocks 

 which are surrounded by the water, and others again to the 

 coarse herbage which often extends to the margin of the 

 water. Fishes are understood to form the principal food of 

 all the species ; but they also eat polypi and other floating 

 animals, and even sea-birds, such as terns, petrels, and the 

 smaller gulls, which are usually very plentiful in the great 

 haunts of the seals, and resort to them for nearly the same 

 purpose as the seals do ; only they eat the smaller fishes, 

 while the seals prefer the larger ones. 



Seals are not easily killed my means of cutting instruments, 

 for though the wounds bleed copiously, the labor of killing 



