MURDOCH.] SEAL HUNTING. 271 
Later in the winter the seals resort to very ineonsiderable cracks 
among the hummocks for air, and nets are set hanging around these 
cracks, so that a seal can not approach the crack without being caught. 
There was such a crack just in the edge of the rough land floe, not half 
a mile from Utkiavwin, in February, 1883, from which two men took 
several seals, visiting the nets every day or two. Those men who do 
not go off on the deer hunt keep one or more seal nets set all winter, 
either in this way or in the third method, which can be practiced only 
after the daylight has come back, when the ice is thick. At this sea- 
son there are frequently to bé found among the hummocks what the 
natives eall i/glus, dome-shaped snow houses about 6 feet in diameter 
and 2 or 3 feet high, with a smooth round hole in the top, and commu- 
nicating with the water. These are undoubtedly the same as the snow 
burrows described by Kumlien,! which the female seal builds to bring 
forth her young in.? They are curious constructions, looking astonish- 
ingly like a man’s work. The natives told me that nets set at these 
places were for the capture of young seals (nétyidru). It appears that 
these houses are the property of a single female only until her young 
one is able to take to the water, as a net is kept set at one of these 
holes, as well as I could understand, sometimes capturing several seals. 
The net is set flat under the hole, the corners being drawn out by cords 
let down through small holes in a circle round the main opening, through 
which the net is drawn. A seal rising to the surface runs his head 
through the meshes of the net. The small holes and sometimes the 
middle one are carefully covered with slabs of snow. 
The officers of the revenue steamer Corwin, who made the sledge 
journey along the northeast coast of Siberia in the early summer of 
1881, saw seal nets set in this way, flat, under air holes in the ice, with 
a hole for each corner of the net. When a seal was caught the net was 
drawn up through the middle hole with a hooked pole. In 1883 they 
began setting these nets at Point Barrow about March 4, and probably 
about the same date the year before, though we did not happen to ob- 
serve this method of netting until considerably later. 
In June and July, when the ice becomes rotten and worn into holes, 
the seals “haul out” to bask in the sun, and are then stalked and shot. 
They are exceedingly wary at this season. The seal usually taken in 
the methods above described is the rough or ringed seal (Phoca feetida), 
but in 1881 a single male ribbon seal (Histriophoca fasciata) was netted, 
and in 1882 a native shot one at the breathing hole, but it was carried 
away by the current before he could secure it. The natives said that 
they sometimes caught the harbor seal (P. vitulina) in the shore nets in 
Elson Bay. The bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus), whose skin is 
especially prized for making harpoon lines, boot soles, umiak covers, 
! Contributions, p. 57. 
? Hall, Arctic Researches, pp. 507 and 578, with diagrams. 
* Hooper, Corwin Report, p. 25. 
