MARINE CARNIVORA 



141 



One old male shot off the coast of Connemara weighed nearly 400 Ibs., and was 8 feet long. It 

 is found off Scandinavia and eastwards to the coast of Greenland, and breeds off our coasts in 

 October and November. This is the large seal occasionally shot up Scotch lochs. Its colour is 

 yellowish gray, varied with blots and patches of dirty black and brown. 



THE COMMON SEAL. 



This seal is smaller than the preceding. It breeds on parts of the Welsh and Cornish coasts, 

 and is found on both sides of the Atlantic and in the North Pacific. It assembles in small herds, and 

 frequents lochs, estuaries, and river mouths. In the summer it is fond of following flounders and 

 sea-trout up rivers. A few years ago one came up the Thames and was shot at Richmond. The 

 young are born in June, and are grayish white. The adults are variously mottled with gray, 

 brown, and black. The fondness of seals for music is proverbial. Macgillivray, the Scotch 

 naturalist, said that in the Hebrides he could bring half a score of them within forty yards of him 

 by a few notes on his flute, when they would swim about with their heads above water like so 

 many black dogs. A seal was captured by the servants of a landowner near Clew Bay, on the 

 west coast of Ireland, and kept tame for four years. It became so attached to the house that, 

 after being carried out to sea three times, it returned on each occasion. The cruel wretches who 

 owned it then blinded it, out of curiosity to see whether it could find its way back sightless. 

 The poor animal did so after eight days. 



The common seal is still fairly numerous on the rocky western coasts of the British Islands, 

 though a few old seals, unable to forget their early habits, appear now and then in Morecambe 

 Bay and in the Solway. It is not uncommon off the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland. It also 

 frequents a sand-bank in the Dornoch Firth, though it has been much persecuted there. The 

 common seal is gregarious, while 

 the gray seal usually lives only in 

 pairs, or at most in small com- 

 panies. Two or three dozen like 

 to lie closely packed on shore with 

 all their heads turning seawards. 

 The white hair of the young seals 

 which, as already said, are bora 

 in June is shed in a day or two, 

 when the young take to the water. 

 With regard to their reputed mu- 

 sical proclivities, some experi- 

 ments made at the Zoological 

 Gardens did not bear out this 

 belief; but there is much evi- 

 dence that in a state of nature 

 they will approach and listen to 

 music. The common seal has a 

 large brain capacity, and is a very 

 intelligent creature. The upper 

 parts of this seal are yellowish 

 gray, spotted with black and 

 brown, the under parts being 

 silver-gray. 



The H.KP-SEM. is an Arctic LAND SEA-LION 



or ice-seal which sometimes finds , , , , f , , j L r, ^ , u 



Another photograph of the "walrus tamed by Herr Carl Hagenbeck. Notice the sea-lion in 

 itS Way here. The young are born the right-hand corner, which aho formed one of the same performing troupe 



