RINGED SEAL. 249 



have been taken on the neighbouring coast, but Mr. 

 Gurney does not now remember the exact locality. The 

 fur was of a grey colour, and the skull is that of a very 

 aged animal. But although this is our only certain 

 record of the species having been killed in Britain, there 

 is reason to believe that it sometimes visits our coasts. 

 In Mr. Wilson's paper on Scottish Seals in the first volume 

 of the " Magazine of Zoology and Botany, 1 ' a small and 

 rare species is mentioned on the authority of Mr. McNeil 

 of Colonsay as being sometimes seen in the Hebrides, 

 where it is called by the natives Bodach, or "the old 

 man/' *' So small is it that my informant for a long 

 time entertained an idea (in opposition to the prevailing 

 opinion of the natives) that it was the young of the 

 Common Seal. This view, however, he afterwards gave 

 up, on seeing specimens not larger than an ordinary Seal 

 of three months, but with grey beards and decayed teeth ; 

 and, moreover, when on shore on the same rock with the 

 other Seals, they do not lie near them, but a little way 

 apart. They are also few in number, and Mr. McNeil 

 does not happen to recollect having ever seen two of them 

 together. They are not at all so shy as the Common 

 Seal, nor do they frequent such wild and desert stations 

 as Tapvaist " (the Grey Seal). Mr. Lloyd has suggested 

 that this Bodach of the Hebridians must be the Ringed 

 Seal, and from both the size and the habits mentioned 

 this view seems more than probable. To go back to 

 geological times, it was probably not uncommon on the 

 shores of Britain during the glacial epoch, for our friend 

 Prof. Turner has identified the remains of Seals found in 

 the brick-clays of various parts of Scotland with this 

 species ; it has also been found in similar deposits in 

 Sweden by Prof. Kinberg, along with Ph. vitulina and 

 Ph. bar bat a. 



K K 



