THE OCEAN MAMMALS 367 
seals,’ as they are called, have mostly passed along the 
Labrador coast. 
When these poor creatures are killed, the waste is terrible. 
I have seen three or four thousand bodies of young seals, 
freshly stripped of their furry jackets, left to rot, or be a 
prey for sharks, as the case may be. The sealing industry 
is a very popular one, however, in Newfoundland. The 
sealing masters are the great men of the fishery, and there 
can be no question that from the sealer’s point of view, 
the adventure, the call for pluck and hardihood, and the 
gamble of it, beyond the few dollars each man may make, 
are great attractions. It is not true, so far as I have seen, 
that brutalities, such as flaying alive, are ever practised. 
Nor can any one, knowing the men as intimately as I 
do, ever believe them capable of any such abominable 
atrocities. 
The “beater seal’? returns as a “bedlamer” with his 
fellow-beaters left from the previous year, when the old 
seals come south next winter. He plays about among the 
floes, and returns again north in the spring, to come back 
a “‘young harp”’ the third winter, ready to do his share in 
maintaining the race. Often, however, he does not breed 
till the fourth year, when he assumes the dignity and name 
of an “old harp.” Thesaddle, or harp, isa large, bilateral, 
‘ black, wing-shaped patch across his back showing well on 
the lighter, drab-coloured skin of the rest of his body. 
Even when the dangers of the ice-floes are over, where 
many old seals, as well as the young, are slaughtered, the 
harp is still not safe on his northern journey. In May and 
June, along the shores of Labrador huge frame nets are put 
out from a capstan on the land. The great room of net 
