128 SEALS AND SEAL SHOOTING 



long; there must have been several thousand seals 

 in it. Greenland seals are to be met with at all 

 seasons here, but are most numerous in winter, 

 especially in December and January and the 

 early part of February, at which time the breed- 

 ing females disappear and resort to the icefields 

 in the Gulf, for the purpose of depositing their 

 young, which they begin to do about the 15th of 

 February. As in the case of the Harbor Seal, the 

 young are perfectly white at birth and have a fine 

 silky coat of about an inch long; if they are killed 

 within two or three days after birth, this fur is 

 very fine, but if a longer time has elapsed, 

 especially if it is fine weather, the hair falls off 

 quickly and the true hair and color is assumed. 

 At one year old the color is whitish under- 

 neath with occasionally a few black spots 

 about the size of a ten cent piece. These spots 

 are not always present, very often the color be- 

 ing a uniform dirty white. On the back they 

 have a broad streak of a greyish or blackish color. 

 In their second year there is a slight change. 

 The markings are more numerous and are never 

 absent, the Black spots are also larger and more 

 generally distributed over the body. The color 

 of the back is not quite so dark and even. In the 

 third year most of the black spots having en- 

 larged are merged into each ether and form irreg- 

 ular patches about the size of a hen's egg or 

 slightly larger; the color of the spots also begins 



