70 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



asleep, and lie very stiff, but now and again one or other of them, 

 with a grunt of disgust, will hitch round his rudimentary-looking 

 fore-flipper, and start scratching himself where the salt drying 

 into his skin has made it irritable. I believe it is this, and not, 

 as some people say, the attacks of amphibious parasites, that 

 makes these proceedings necessary, inasmuch as I cannot ever 

 remember to have seen a wet seal so engaged. 



And it is perhaps worth while to turn your attention for a 

 moment to that same fore-flipper. Short and rudimentary as it looks, 

 it will reach to almost any place on a seal's body, and it is so 

 double jointed that its owner can scratch the tip of his nose and 

 the small of his back with almost equal ease. It is said that seals 

 use the sharp cutting edge when fighting, which would account for 

 the number of short straight scars with which some skins are 

 literally seamed. 



But far more interesting to unaccustomed eyes are three or 

 four black-looking seals that are lying head and tail in air balanced 

 upon the very smallest available part of their diaphragms. One 

 wonders why a seal should delight to lie in this apparently unrest- 

 ful attitude. The question is rather a puzzling one, but a little 

 observation will make one thing at least clear. The seals in 

 this position are as a rule those freshest out of the water. You 

 will see a seal cruise with head held low two or three times past a 

 suitable rock, and then select the easiest landing-place and gallop 

 awkwardly up. After that he will rest for a while and meditate. 

 Then suddenly up go his hind flippers, and he begins washing 

 them against one another with " invisible soap," spreading out 

 first one and then the other to its full extent, clenching the re- 

 maining flipper like a fist, and rubbing them both quickly together. 

 Probably he does this to dry them. His flippers, especially the 

 great expansive hind ones, are at once the most important and 

 the least protected parts of his body. They are not covered like 

 the rest of him with a thick coating of blubber, and here if any- 

 where the cold of the water evaporating from him might do him 

 harm. Therefore he begins by wringing them out. This done he 

 lies head and tail up with as little of him as possible against the 

 rock. In this position he has three advantages, the water drains 

 freely off him, the air reaches him as much as possible, and he 

 avoids lying in a pool of his own making. It is the waving of 

 these hind-flippers that as often as not betrays the presence of a 



