MIGRATION. 163 



description to be the Phoca Cristata; Desmarest, 

 (P. leonina ; Fabr. ;) and the other, TJtsuk, appa- 

 rently the Phoca barbata of Mi'iller. These 

 species emigrate twice in the year from the 

 coasts of Greenland. First, they retire in July 

 and return again in September, and this expe- 

 dition southwards is apparently undertaken, as 

 Crantz supposes, in quest of food, but other 

 motives are probably influential. The time of 

 their second departure is in March. They 

 return in the beginning of June, the females 

 with their young, crowding together like flocks 

 of sheep. After their first voyage they come 

 back in good condition, but when they appear 

 in June they arc very lean. 



" In this last tour," says Crantz, " they 

 seem to observe a certain fixed time and track, 

 like the birds of passage, and take a route that 

 is free from ice ; therefore the ships near Spitz- 

 burg can safely follow them. We know they 

 come up out of the south first, then twenty 

 days after they are eighty or one hundred 

 leagues further north, and the longer the date 

 the further they lose themselves in the north. 

 We can pretty well ascertain the day at the end 

 of May when they will be again at Frederick's 

 Hope, and in the beginning of June at Good 

 Hope, and so further north. But the place 

 they retire to in that last circuit cannot be 

 determined with equal certainty." ..." They 

 do not go to America, for their course is not 

 steered westward, but northward ; nor do the 

 sailors ever see tUem in the open sea at this 



