256 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



Labrador, Newfoundland, and Greenland ; to say nothing of the re- 

 searches and notes made by European scientists. It differs com- 

 pletely in shape and habit from its congeners on these islands. 

 Here, where I have studied its biology, it seldom comes up from 

 the water more than a few rods at the farthest ; generally hauling 

 and resting at the margin of the surf- wash. It takes up no position 

 on land to hold and protect a family or harem, preferring the de- 

 tached water-worn rocks, especially those on the lonely north shore 

 of St. Paul, although I have seen it resting at "Gorbatch," near the 

 sea-margin of the great seal-rookery of that name, on the Reef 

 Point of St. Paul ; its cylindrical, supine, gray and white body 

 marked in strong contrast with the erect, black, and ochre-colored 

 forms of the Callorhinus, which swarmed round about it. On such 

 small spots of rock, wet and isolated from the mainland, and in se- 

 cluded places of the north shore, the " nearhpah " brings forth its 

 young, a single pup, perfectly white, covered with long woolly hair, 

 and weighing from three to seven pounds. This pup grows rap- 

 idly, and after the lapse of four or five months it tips the scales at 

 fifty pounds ; by that time it has shed its infant coat and donned 

 the adult soft steel-gray hair over the head, limbs, and abdomen, 

 with its back most richly mottled and barred lengthwise, by dark 

 brown and brown-black streaks and blotches, suffused at their edges 

 into the light steel-gray ground of the body. When they appear in 

 the spring following, this bright gray tone to their color has ri- 

 pened into a dingy ochre, and the mottling spread well over the head 

 and down on the upper side or back of the flippers, but fades out 

 as it progresses. It has no appreciable fur or under-wool. There 

 is no noteworthy difference as to color or size between the sexes. 

 So far as I have observed, they are not polygamous. They are ex- 

 ceedingly timid and wary at all times, and in this manner and 

 method they are diametrically opposed, not by shape alone, but 

 by habit and disposition, to the fashion of the fur-seal in especial, 

 and the sea-lion. Their skin is of little value, comparatively, but 

 their chief merit, according to the natives, is the relative greater 

 juiciness and sweetness of their flesh, over even the best steaks of 

 sea-lion or fur-seal pup meat. 



One common point of agreement among all authors was, by my 

 observations of fact, so strikingly refuted, that I will here correct a 

 prevalent error made by naturalists who, comparing the hair-seal 

 with the fur-seal, state that in consequence of the peculiar struct- 



