A Living Miracle 9 1 



through the sea and grips his finny prey when fleeing 

 at top speed. And he has need ; for the Seal has, 

 hke the shark, a tormenting liver. Not in the direction 

 of indigestion, but of digestion. Its secretion of 

 digestive juices is so abundant that hardly is the 

 stomach filled before it is empty again. And who 

 can wonder at it after witnessing the amazing ex- 

 penditure of energy by one of these beautiful creatures 

 during one bright morning, say off the Pribyloff 

 Islands ? 



Yet there is one feature of the Seal's life that is 

 truly miraculous, not to be accounted for by any 

 known hypothesis whatever. For ten months of the 

 year the * old man ' Seal needs, and gets, fully one 

 hundredweight of fish per day to keep him fit. During 

 the other two months he fights, makes love, never 

 sleeps, never drinks, and never eats. Behold here a 

 natural miracle. Many animals there be who fast 

 through longer periods, but all their natural forces 

 are quiescent, dormant ; the waste of tissue is in- 

 finitesimal. The Seal only, throughout the most 

 strenuous period each year of his intensely strenuous 

 life, neither eats nor drinks nor sleeps for two months 

 on end. 



There are many things in the lives of animals, even 

 those closely associated with us, which are difficult 

 to understand, but this little matter of the Seal's 

 abstinence from nourishment and rest during the time 

 of his greatest activity is, I think, the most marvellous 

 and non-understandable of all. Like other animals, 

 normally gentle at every other period of the year, 

 except the mating season, the male Seal is then trans- 

 formed from the soft-eyed amiable amphibian, harmless 

 as a dove to everything, except the fish upon which 

 he lives, into a furious beast with bristling moustache. 



