256 Selous: Observations on the Grey Seal. 
days young Seal, though I have seen nothing of it, it must, 
I think, have been very well fed during the darkness of night, 
when I was for the most part asleep or trying to be, for it ‘lies 
now, and has done almost all to-day, looking the picture of 
well-being, fat, rounded, with various twitching motions 
which seem to denote both bodily and mental ease and con- 
tentment. Now, however, he has awaken and begins again 
to call lustily, though I see no more liklihood than yesterday of 
his appeal being answered before nightfall. 
I may mention that on the suckling before this last one, I 
carefully examined the body of the aher Seal, through the 
glasses, and saw that it was marked in various places with what 
seemed deep, raking claw wounds, and, in fact, could not well 
have been anything else. They were in sets, as it were, as one 
would expect were this the case, and one of three, close together, 
was particularly deep, and still bloody, if not quite bleeding. 
From this we must conclude that the female Grey Seals fight 
together, if they do not owe these favours to the graspings 
of rival males, which is perhaps more likely. 
I cannot understand this young Seal. He looks as I said, 
yet his cries are now such as seem certainly to denote suffering, 
and very painful to hear. If something has happened to his 
dam, and he really starving, though in the first easy stages of 
the process, it is very distressing, the fatter the more shocking. 
There is nothing Icando. I have drunk all the milk, and even 
if I had not ane would only lengthen it out. 
OCTOBER I4TH.—It grew rough in the night, and was so 
rough and windy when I went out of the shed, this morning, that 
I did not expect to be fetched off to-day. I spent most of the 
morning watching the parent Seals of the first young one, 
whose feeding I watched the first day (last Sunday) from the 
tent. The two Kept constantly swimming about in the little 
bay on the rocky shore of which the young one lay. They were 
often very sportive together, one of them sometimes making a 
quick little succession of blows at the other with its flipper— 
in play, as it seemed to me, for the most part, but when this 
happened whilst the two were close in shore, and the female, 
leading, seemed desirous of suckling her calf, it struck me that 
they were delivered in earnest, and that she cuffed back at the 
male to prevent his following her. Several times the pair got 
right into the white water of the bursting waves close on the 
shore, and it struck me that this had an exhilirating effect on 
them (as though it had been effervescing champagne) since 
several times—twice, at any rate, if not thrice—their little 
sportive mock combats broke out init. I had observed either 
this or another pair acting thus on (I think) the first day I 
came, and then (which was not the case now) they often raised 
little clouds of spray about themselves. The most violent waves 
> 
Naturalist, 
