144 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 



great difficulty driven into the sea. The females give birth to their young soon after their 

 arrival. The new-born young ones are almost black, unlike the adults, which are of a light slate- 

 brown. They are suckled by the female for some time, and then left to themselves, lying on the 

 beach, where they seem to grow fat without further feeding. They are always allowed by the 

 sealers to lie like this, ' in order to make more oil.' This account was corroborated by all the sealers 

 I met, but I do not understand it. Probably the cows visit their offspring unobserved from time 

 to time. Peron says that both parent elephant-seals stay with the young without taking any 

 food at all till the latter are about six or seven weeks old, and that the old ones conduct the 

 young to the water and carefully keep them company. The rapid increase in v/eight is in 

 accordance with Peron's account. Goodridge gives a somewhat different story namely, that 

 after the females leave the young the old males and the pups proceed inland, as far as two miles 

 sometimes, and stop without food for more than a month, during which time they lose fat. The 

 male sea-elephants come ashore for the purpose of breeding about the middle of August, the 

 females a little later." 



Formerly the elephant-seals were found as far north as the Californian coast, where their 

 capture was the main business of the sealing-traders. This species also formed the mainstay of 

 the far southern sealers. As the elephant-seals were killed off, so the business became less and 

 less profitable. It is to be hoped that the voyages of exploration to the Antarctic ice-fringe will 

 not lead to the discovery of fresh sealing-grounds, for if this is the case there is little chance that 

 any of the southern seals will escape entire destruction. Some form of close time has already 

 been enforced in the pursuit of the hair-seals of Northern Europe ; but it is very desirable that 

 the species still found on our own coasts should also receive protection. Except when they paid 

 visits to the fixed salmon-nets, they never did any harm ; and fixed nets are now illegal. When 

 a seal learned the use of the stake-nets, which these animals were very quick to understand, it 

 would wait quietly till it saw a fish caught, and then swim up and carry it off before the fisher- 

 men could take it. 



Two species namely, the COMMON SEAL and GRAY SEAL still regularly visit our shores. 

 The common seal breeds on our southwestern coasts, and the gray seal off the Hebrides. If the 

 common seal were accorded a close time, its numbers would probably increase ; and the spectacle 

 of such interesting creatures visible on our coast could not fail to be of great interest. All the 

 old legends of mermaids and wild men of the sea are based on the capture of seals. Perhaps the 

 most ancient is one which records such a capture in the river near Orford Castle, in Suffolk, in 

 the reign of Henry II. The ignorant soldiers were persuaded that it was a man, and tortured it 



to make it speak. They then took it 

 to the church, and showed it the 

 sacred emblems. As it " showed no 

 reverence," they took it back to the 

 castle, and fed it on fish. It was al- 

 lowed to go into the river, but re- 

 turned to its captors of its own accord. 

 Later it swam away to the sea. The 

 monk who recorded the story stated 

 his conviction that this seal was an 

 evil spirit which had got into the 

 body of a drowned sailor. A gray 

 seal was taken not many years ago in 

 the creek leading up to the little town 

 of Wells, in Norfolk. It was so tame 



B) permission of the Hon. Walter Rothschild] [Irtng 



HARP-SEAL th a t th e fishermen caught it by throw- 



The harp-seal comes from Greenland ing coats over it as it lay on the mud. 



