150 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



neither of the other varieties are, and generally go 

 in bands of fifty to five hundred together ; they are 

 extremely difficult to kill, as during the summer 

 months (at Spitzbergen at any rate) they never go 

 upon the ice. They do not seem to be prompted by 

 the same laudable curiosity as the other seals, and 

 they go at such a rapid pace through the water as 

 to defy pursuit from a boat. When they come up 

 to breathe, these seals do not, like the others, take 

 a deliberate breath and look round about them, but 

 the whole troop merely take a sort of simultaneous 

 flying leap through the air like a shoal of porpoises 

 as they go along, and they reappear again at an in- 

 credible distance from their last breathing-place — 

 whence the name of "springers" applied to them 

 by the sealers. 



The Jan Mayen seal is 200 to 300 pounds in 

 weight, and is the fattest and most buoyant of all 

 the Arctic phocce. 



Lord David shot two of these seals on the 29th ; 

 but we generally regard it as a bad omen to see 

 many of them, as whenever they are in numbers 

 the walrus and the large seal seem to disappear. 



One of our men says that, some years ago, the 

 ship's company to which he at the time belonged 

 killed 400 of these "springers" in a single after- 

 noon b}' the simple process of knocking them on 

 the head with the " haak-picks" as they lay on the 

 ice near South Cape. 



Crew cutting up blubber, and scraping and clean* 



