(^Authors are responsible for nomenclahire used.) 



<C^47 



The Scottish Naturalist 



NOS. 123 AND 124.] 1922 



[March- April 



THE GREY SEALS OF HASKEIR. 



In the House of Commons not many days ago the Secretary 

 for Scotland was asked whether he was aware that the Grey 

 Seals Protection Act had, after a useful course of five years, 

 lapsed, and that consequent upon the removal of protection, 

 the clubbing of Grey Seals had begun again on the island of 

 Haskeir. The question was clearly based upon a note in an 

 interesting book by Mr H. Hesketh Pritchard, on Sport in 

 Wildest Britain. 



Now Haskeir, a rocky island off the Outer Hebrides, has 

 long been famous for its colonies of Grey Seals, and in times 

 gone by it became infamous because of the inordinate 

 slaughter of these great inoffensive creatures, by far the 

 largest of our native Seals. In TJie Infinence of Man on 

 Animal Life in Scotland are collected early records of the 

 history and destruction of Grey Seals in various parts of 

 Scotland; there we learn that in the opening of the eighteenth 

 century Martin recorded of Haskeir : " I was told also that 

 320 Seals, Young and Old, have been Killed at one time 

 in this Place"; and that "in 1830 Macgillivray could still 

 write of ' Gaskir [or Haskeir] twelve miles from Harris' that 

 'great numbers [of seals] are killed upon it annually, 

 upwards of a hundred and twenty having been destroyed in 

 one day.'" 



123 AND 124 E 



