SPECIES HUNTED. 545 



whole matter in question lias been thus tersely presented by Mr. 

 Carroll. " For the last fifty years," says this experienced writer, 

 " I have been from time to fime well and intimately acquainted 

 with ice-hunting masters; nine-tenths of them when they first 

 took charge of ice-hunting vessels generally brought into port 

 what is usually termed ' good saving trips.' It is strange to 

 say, but not the less true, that the longer a man takes charge 

 of an ice-hunting vessel the less he knows where to obtain a 

 trip of old and young seals. In a word, the prosperity of a 

 sealing voyage, one year with another, depends ujion chances, 

 and I will go farther and say that three-fouiths of the heavy trips 

 of seals' fat that were brought heretofore into port, as well as 

 the heavy trips of seals' fat brought into port at the present 

 day, were got also by chance. Spring after spring I have known 

 ice-hunting vessels to get jammed in the ice, and there kept so 

 long that the men despaired of obtaining a profitable trip of 

 seals. Steamships as well as sailing vessels are very often, 

 owing to gales of wind, obliged to run into the ice for safety, 

 much against the master's will, and the very place the master 

 wished above all things to avoid turned out to be the very spot 

 where what he was after was plenty of seals."* 



Species Hunted. The Seals hunted in the North Atlantic 

 and Arctic waters belong chiefly to four species, namely, the 

 Harp or Greenland Seal, Phoca (PagopMlvs) grcenlandica, the 

 Eough Seal, Phoca (Pusa) foetida, the Harbor Seal {Phoca vitu- 

 Una), and the Hooded Seal {Gystophora cristata). The first, by 

 its numbers, far exceeds in imjMDrtance all the others together, 

 and is hence the chief object of pursuit. Two other species, the 

 Bearded Seal {Erignatlms barbatus), and the Gray Seal (Hali- 

 chcerns grypus), are also taken when met with, but both are rare 

 and neither enters largely into the general product of the Seal- 

 fishery. The Newfoundland Seal-fishery is limited to the capture 

 of the Greenland, Harbor, and Hooded Seals. The latter is not, 

 however, a regular object of pursuit, but is taken as oi)portunity 

 favors, and some seasons but very few individuals of this species 

 are met with. The Harbor Seal is taken along the shores, where 

 it is permanently resident, but comparatively only in small 

 numbers. The Eough Seal and the Bearded Seal are of con- 

 siderable importance to the Greenlanders, the former especially, 

 more than half of the Seals taken by them belonging to this 

 species. 



* Seal and Herring Fisheries of Newfoundland, p. 36. 

 Misc. Pub. No. 12 35 



