SIZE OF PHOCA BARB ATA. G5 



symptoms of life, I always darted a harpoon into 

 him; but, if he seemed quite dead, some one jumped 

 out and struck the haak-pick into his head, and 

 dragged him away from the edge for fear he should 

 come alive again. This is not an unnecessary pre- 

 caution, as 1 have known a seal, apparently stone 

 dead, give a convulsive kick over the brink of the 

 ice, and go to the bottom like a sixty-eight pound 

 shot, while his proprietors, as they delusively con- 

 sidered themselves, were standing within two feet 

 of him. 



When the seal is fairly dead, all the men except 

 one get on the ice, and with their knives they strip 

 the skin and blubber, in one sheet, off his body in a 

 very few minutes. The carcass, or " krop," is then 

 thrown into the sea, that it may not be mistaken 

 for a live seal at a distance ; the blubber is laid flat 

 in the bottom of the boat, and you proceed in quest 

 of more or return to the ship. 



A full-sized Spitzbergen seal, in good condition, 

 is about nine and a half or ten feet long, by six or 

 six and a half feet in circumference, and weighs six 

 hundred pounds or upward. The skin and fat 

 amount to about one half the total weight. The 

 blubber lies in one layer of two or three inches 

 thick underneath the skin, and yields about one 

 half of its own weight of fine oil. The value of a 

 seal of course varies with the state of the oil mar- 

 ket all over the world ; but, at the time of which I 

 write, oil being unusually cheap, they only averaged 



E 



