328 



VERTEBRATA. 



THE IIAKP SEAL. 



skin of the same ground-color, but without hands, and with unequal, well-defined, angular, brown 

 spots, thrown, as it were, at hazard, on different places of the upper and lower part of the body. 

 The ground-color of the old male is gray-white, and his length is five feet. The face is entirely 

 black. According to Crantz, "when newly born this species is quite white and woolly. In the 

 first year it is cream-colored; in the second, gray; in the third, painted with stripes; in the fourth, 

 Bpotted ; and in the fifth, wears half-moons as the sign of its maturity." It is found in the Frozen 

 I >cean, Greenland, Newfoundland, Iceland, the White Sea, and Kamtschatka. 



According to Fabricius, this species is very numerous in the deep bays and the mouths of the 

 rivers in Greenland. They leave the coast twice a year; at first in March, returning in May; 

 again in June, and reappearing in September. Their young — one, rarely two, at a birth — are 

 brought forth in spring, and are suckled on the ice far from shore. They avoid the fixed ice, but 

 live and sleep in vast herds near the floating ice-islands, among which they are sometimes seen 

 swimming in great numbers, under the guidance of one who seems to act as leader and sentinel 

 for the whole. Their food consists of all kinds of fish, shell-fish included, but they prefer the arc- 

 tic salmon. When on the feed, and one comes to the surface to breathe, he lifts his head only 

 above the water, and quickly dives without changing his place. These seals swim in many atti- 

 tudes, on their back, on their sides, as well as in the ordinary position, and occasionally whirl 

 themselves about, as if in sport. They sleep frequently on the water, and are considered incau- 

 tious, especially on the ice. 



They arc said to have a great dread of the toothed whales. If a grampus perceive a seal of 

 any species hashing on floating ice, it is asserted that he docs his best to upset the ice or beat the 

 seal off with his tins, when the latter becomes an easy prey. 



Crantz avers that this is a careless, stupid seal, and that it is the only one which the Green- 

 lander will venture to attaek alone. He goes to hunt it in his kajak, which is in the form of a 

 weaver's shuttle. W hen he perceives a seal, he endeavors to surprise it unawares, with the wind 

 and sun in his hack, that he may be neither heard nor seen. He approaches it rapidly, but 

 silently, till within four or six fathoms. lie then takes hold of the oar in his left hand, and 

 with his right throws the harpoon. If it is fixed, the Greenlander throws the attached buoy over- 

 hoard on the aame side that the seal dives, and he dives upon the instant. The struck victim 

 often carries the buoy under water, but, wearied and wounded, it must at last come up to breathe. 

 The Greenlander, who is on the watch, now attacks it with his long lance till the animal is ex- i 

 bausted, when he releases it from its Bufferings with his short lance, and then blows it up like a 

 bladder that it may swim the easier after his kajak. This is a service of danger to the seal-hunter. 

 If the line should be entangled, or if it should catch hold of the kajak, an oar, the hunter's hand, 

 or his neck, as it sometimes does when the wind is high, or if the seal should make a sudden turn . 



