464 Mr. Selby on the Great Seal of the Farn Islands. 
rate Seal-hunter), and to the annoyance they have since been 
subjected to by the erection of the present outer lighthouse, 
which is built upon an island to which they were in the habit 
of retiring to rest during the recess of the tide. 
In the year 1772, this old gentleman informs me that he 
killed seventy-two young seals, all of this species, and once also 
killed fourteen old ones, in one day, upon the Crimston Rock, 
the small island upon which they mostly calve, an event that 
takes place, as I have previously observed, in the month of No- 
vember; and as the rutting season begins about the last week 
in February or first week in March, it would appear that 
the period of gestation of the Halicherus griseus is about 
eight and a half or nine months. The young when first calved 
are nearly three feet in length, and grow very rapidly till they 
quit the rock and are able to follow their dams to the water, 
which is generally about a fortnight after birth; when first 
calved they are covered with a longish soft woolly hair, of a 
yellowish white or cream-colour, which gives place before 
they quit the rock to a shorter hair of a grisly hue. _If an op- 
portunity offers, the young are sometimes tethered by a rope 
and kept upon the rock a week or two beyond the usual time, | 
in order to get them of as large a size and as fat as possible 
before they are slaughtered ; but this must not be persisted in 
too long, otherwise the dams are apt to forsake or refuse to 
come ashore to suckle them at the stated times of tide. The 
food of the Halicherus consists entirely of fish, not restricted, 
it is supposed, to any particular species, though they show a 
ereat predilection for the Cyclostoma lumpus (Lump-sucker), 
particularly to the female, which there goes by the name of the 
Hush. These fish resort in great numbers, towards spring and 
the early summer months, to the Farn Islands to cast their 
spawn; and when visiting the islands at this season I have 
seen the skins of these fish, divested of their contents, floating 
about in great numbers. When full grown, the male or Bull 
Seals attain a length of upwards of eight feet: one of the 
largest ever killed by Mr. Blacket, the old gentleman I have 
alluded to, measured nine feet in length, and seven and a half 
feet in girth immediately behind the flippers ; it weighed up- 
wards of forty-seven stone, of fourteen pounds to the stone, 
and produced twenty gallons of excellent oil. The proportion 
of this valuable product, however, depends more on the con- 
dition than the size of the animal. The females are inferior 
in size to the males, and are readily known by their lighter 
colour, being usually of a grisly white, rarely piebald, whereas 
the Bulls appear of a deep gray or nearly black. They swim 
with great strength and rapidity, and are frequently submerged 
