CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER G. PINNIPEDIA. 



333 



KILLING SEALS. 



of smell and hearing are acute, and their instincts are as perfect as those of the common seal of 

 our seas. 



When the islands frequented by these seals were first visited by voyagers, the poor animals had 

 not the slightest fear of man : they would lie quite still, while their comrades were knocked on 

 the head and skinned ; but in a few years they got intimidated, and placed themselves on rocks, 

 from which, unless intercepted, they could immediately dive into the sea. Weddell says that 

 "the agility of this creature is much greater than from its appearance an observer would antici- 

 pate. I have seen them, indeed, often escape from men running fast in pursuit to kill them." 

 He refutes the absurd story that seals can defend themselves, somewhat as the Parthians did, by 

 propelling stones, backward, at their pursuers. It was said that the seals threw them with their 

 tails ; he explains it in this way, that, when the animal is chased on a stony beach, it advances 

 'by drawing the hind-flippers forward, thereby shortening the body and projecting itself by the 

 tail, which, when relieved by the effort of the fore-flippers, throws up a quantity of stones to the 

 distance of some yards." 



In the years 1821 and 1822, the number of fur-seals taken on the shores of the South Shetland 

 Islands, by the vessels principally of the English and Americans, was no fewer than three hun- 

 dred and twenty thousand ; and Weddell has shown that a hundred thousand skins might have 

 been procured yearly for a considerable period, but for the recklessness of the hunters, who killed 

 the mothers before the young were able to take to the water, and pursued* and took seals of every 

 denomination. "By this means, at the end of the second year, the animals became nearly ex- 

 tinct; the young, having lost their mothers when only three or four days old, of course all died, 

 which, at the lowest calculation, exceeded 100,000." Captain Carmichael observes, that, owing 



