THE CRESTED, OR BLADDER-NOSE SEAL. 



239 



is the fiercest and most dangerous, as the Eskimo know to their cost in attacking it from their kayaks. 

 It does not hesitate to return an assault, and the crest, it is said, affords some protection from wounds 

 inflicted by the club. These brutes fight ferociously among themselves, and the roaring during such 

 ice-battles, in the still Arctic regions, is said to be audible four miles off. The so-called crest, hood, or 

 bladder, is in reality nothing of the sort, but only a peculiar enlargement of the nasal passages, more 

 particularly developed in the old animals of both sexes. The configuration of the head of this creature 

 is hemispherical, and proportionally broad and short. The bony parts of the snout, and the cartilaginous 

 septum of the nose and nostrils generally, are so formed as to allow great dilatation of these parts. That is 

 to say, the two passages of the nostrils are, in the full-grown animal, exceedingly capacious fleshy tunnels. 



CRESTED SEAL. 



From youth onwards, this region acquires prominence, and, partly through habit and growth of the 

 structures in later life, the animal when roused inflates, by compression of the muscles of upper-lip and 

 nose, the cavities in question, so much so as to produce the expansion on the forehead which has given 

 rise to its specific soubriquet. All engravings, even our own, represent this structure as reaching farther 

 back on the head than the absolute anatomical conformation of the parts warrants, but in the live 

 animal the skin of the head rearwards to some extent swells in unison with the puffed nostril, and 

 hence to a certain degree simulates a hood or crest. Some sealers regard the so-called bladder as an 

 air reservoir for buoyancy, an idea totally at variance with its true nature. The teeth of this genus are 

 peculiar, the incisors being fewer in number. The formula is Incisors, jEf ; canines, jEi ; premolars, 

 ^ ; molars, ^=30. From eight to twelve feet in length has been given as the limits of size it 

 obtains. The young are pure white ; when a year old they become greyish, and the hue deepens, becom- 

 ing deep chestnut and black above, though the lighter shade is retained on the under parts ; chiefly 



