370 LABRADOR 
the salmon nets so carefully, and eat the struggling cap- 
tives so rapidly, that there is little wonder most fisher- 
men are ‘agin them.” I have known a seal haunt a net 
so persistently that to get any fish the owner had to watch 
all the while at one end of it, and even then the seal was 
so “well adapted to his environment”’ that he would almost 
snap off the fisherman’s hand as he raced to be first to dis- 
entangle the salmon. The bay seals are captured by our 
people in nets anchored to the bottom. When diving, the 
seals become “meshed” and are soon drowned, as they 
cannot rise to breathe. 
The seals can travel a considerable distance over land 
and can remain for long periods out of water. The harbour 
seal (Phoca vitulina) breeds and lives in Seal Lake, one 
hundred miles inland from Richmond Gulf and eight 
hundred feet above the sea. In winter this seal leaves for 
islands in the open where the sea does not freeze. The bay 
seals of the coast breed on the land in caves, rocks, or beaches. 
I have seen them many times with their young. When 
the baby is born, he is a dusky white, but he soon assumes 
a most beautiful silvery coat mottled with black, which 
he wears for a year. During this time he is called a 
“ranger,” and his skin makes the most attractive clothing, 
sleeping-bags, pouches, ete. 
At three years the ranger becomes a ‘‘doter”’ and is 
a breeding seal. The young are born in April and May 
in southern Labrador, and later on as one gets farther north. 
The young seal is able to take to the water at once. It is 
said that the ‘‘baby-hair”’ is cast inside the mother before 
his birth. 
Clever as the modern circus “‘feature”’ shows seals to be, 
