DISEASES OF SEALS. 23 



impressed me with any perceptible difference between them. 

 Both are naturally very inquisitive ; and a novel object or 

 sound, especially if it be not too abrupt, seldom fails to fix 

 their attention. Availing ourselves of this weak side, we 

 often contrive to allure them within shot. Generally, I 

 think, affectionate attachment to those who are kind to them 

 is, in captivity, more prominent than intellect. In evading 

 enemies they are equal ; but this is evidential rather of 

 timidity than of sagacity, else the hare must be deemed 

 more sagacious than the hound. Of the two, the vitulina 

 is perhaps the more timid and suspicious. 



Dissection of the bodies of these animals seldom presents 

 us with any marks of structural disease. I have never ob- 

 served the liver but in the most perfect health. In the 

 lungs I have seen evidence of hepatization, and in the intes- 

 tines of inflammation. Of this latter disease it is that they 

 generally die in captivity. In the highest state of condition 

 and health, as well as in the lowest, we find intestinal worms 

 in them. Hence a doubt may suggest itself of the accuracy 

 of the pathological principle, which presumes that these ani- 

 mals are the result of morbid action. The fact would seem 

 to be this, that certain species of parasitics inhabit the 

 bodies of certain species of animals as their natural and only 

 places of existence — that their ova are constantly present in, 

 and may even be one of the essential constituents of, the 

 fluids — and that certain circumstances, sometimes of health, 

 sometimes of disease, lead to their development in greater or 

 lesser numbers. — The fluids and conditions of one viscus 

 being favourable for its becoming the nidus of one kind 

 rather than of another, as the fluke in the liver of the sheep, 

 and the ascaris in the great intestines. The residence of 

 the seal is the ocean, his food fish, and his drink salt-water. 

 Much of iodine and muriatic salts must therefore, we pre- 



