AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 257 



ure of their limbs, their progression on land is "mainly accom- 

 plished by a wriggling, serpentine motion of the body, slightly as- 

 sisted by the extremities." This is not so in any respect ; for, 

 whenever I have purposely surprised these animals, a few rods from 

 the beach-margin, they would awake and excitedly scramble, or 

 rather spasmodically exert themselves, to reach the water instantly, 

 riking out quickly with both fore-feet simultaneously, lifting 

 in this way alone, and dragging the whole body forward, without 

 any " wriggling motion " whatever to their back or posterior parts, 

 moving from six inches to a foot in advance every time their fore- 

 feet were projected forward, and the body drawn along according 

 to the violence of the effort and the character of the ground ; the 

 body of the seal then falls flat upon its stomach, and the fore-feet 

 or flippers are free again for another similar motion. This action of 

 Phoca is effected so continuously and so rapidly, that in attempting 

 to head off a young "nearhpah" from the water, at English Bay, I 

 was obliged to leave a brisk walk and take to a dog trot to do it. 

 The hind-feet are not used when exerted in this rapid movement at 

 all ; they are dragged along in the wake of the body, perfectly limp 

 and motionless. But they do use those posterior parts, however, 

 when leisurely climbing up and over rocks undisturbed, or playing 

 one with another ; still it is always a weak, trembling terrestrial ef- 

 fort, and particularly impotent and clumsy. In their swift swim- 

 ming the hind-feet of Phocidce evidently do all the work ; the re- 

 verse is a remarkable characteristic of the OtariidcK. 



These remarks of mine, it should be borne in mind, apply di- 

 rectly to the Phoca vitulina, and I presume indirectly with equal 

 force to all the rest of its more important generic kindred, be they 

 as large as the big inaklok, Erignathus barbata, or less. 



This hair-seal is found around these islands at all seasons of the 

 year, but in very small numbers. I have never seen more than 

 twenty-five or thirty at any one time, and I am told that its occi- 

 dental distribution, although everywhere found, above and below, 

 from the arctic to the tropics, and especially general over the 

 North Pacific coast, nowhere exhibits any great number at any one 

 place ; but we know that it and its immediate kindred form a vast 

 majority of the multitudinous seal-life peculiar to our North At- 

 lantic shores, ice-floes, and contiguous waters. The scarcity of 

 this species, and of all its generic allies, in the waters of the Pacific, 

 is notable as compared with those of the circumpolar Atlantic, 



