THE HERDS OF PROTEUS 75 



My earliest acquaintance with seals was made 

 in my undergraduate days in the neighbourhood 

 of Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland. There 

 I first saw their round, dog-like heads protruding 

 from the water, and I borrowed a Snider rifle 

 from the coastguard and fired sundry ineffectual 

 shots at them. Finding this unavailing, I next 

 visited the rock cave afterwards described by 

 Trench in his " Reminiscences," and swam in 

 about a hundred yards from the narrow entrance 

 with a lighted candle in my hat and a club 

 swung to my wrist in the hope of finding some 

 seals at rest on the shelving beach at the end, 

 and encountering and vanquishing them in single 

 combat. Looking backwards in the light of ex- 

 perience, I am not so sure that it was to be 

 regretted that the enemy was " not at home " ; 

 for, as Monkbarns says, in the "Antiquary," of 

 the Phoca, " they bite like furies " ; and, attired 

 as I was, in a hat and nothing more, in a place 

 where all retreat from the seals was cut off, I 

 might have come off even worse than Hector 

 M'Intyre did in his celebrated encounter. 



When next I saw the seal in his native ele- 

 ment the scene had shifted to the west coast of 

 Scotland, and I was one of a party assembled 

 on the rocks at Duntroon, on a very hot Sunday 

 in August 1867. We had been to church in 

 the morning, and had broken the Sabbath in 

 the afternoon by a delicious plunge into the 



