SEALS GREAT AND SMALL 69 

 NOTES ON SEALS 



BY ALFRED CECIL GATHORNE-HARDY 



Away on the outskirts of the Hebrides there lies a certain 

 island. On one side it raises a frontage of black irregular cliff to 

 meet the full power of the Atlantic ; southward it reaches long 

 fingers of rock, reef beyond reef, into the water, the furthest 

 showing in mere points of surf away to sea. Throughout the 

 whole of its length and breadth the island is a paradise of rare 

 and curious birds and beasts and plants, but to my mind perhaps 

 its chief attraction lies in the innumerable seals that find their 

 home along its coasts. There, on the remoter rocks, the great 

 square-snouted grey seal is still to be found. There any day you 

 care to look, if you know where to go, and the tide is not too high, 

 you may see the common seal in hundreds. For among these reefs, 

 whatever the conditions of wind or water, there must always be 

 found low-lying sheltered places where nothing but the sound of 

 the breaking seas can penetrate. In such places do our western 

 .seals love to lie, not basking on the sand, as I am told their east 

 coast relatives generally do, but low down on a reef where two 

 kicks and a wriggle will send them into the water should danger 

 arise. 



No beast that I know is better worth watching, and perhaps 

 no British beast, before the publication of Mr. J. G. Millais's 

 monumental work on British Mammals, had been so inadequately 

 described. Even to-day few people image a seal as anything else 

 than either a round black head in the water, or at most as lying 

 head up, tail down, in the attitude depicted on the old-fashioned 

 Newfoundland postage stamps. 



Watch them on Ardskenish reefs, lying like great grey slugs, 

 fifty together on a rock : the first thing that strikes you is the 

 number of different [attitudes they take up. Low down by the 

 water two or three big black fellows have cocked up both ends 

 high in the air, till they are bent stiff, with a curve like the 

 rockers of a chair. Above them the rock is literally yellow with 

 seals, some lying prone, some on their backs, others on their sides. 

 Most of the yellow-looking seals, the dry ones, are more than half 



