DOMESTICATION OF SEALS. 33 



of the cow seems hardly to agree with them. Perhaps their 

 being suckled by a sow fed chiefly on fish, the giving them 

 occasionally a little salt water, and then by degrees inducing 

 them to eat fish, might be the best mode until they attained 

 the age of being sustained on fish alone. In the barbata, 

 to ensure rapid taming, it appears to be necessary to cap- 

 ture them before the period of casting the foetal hair, ana- 

 logous to what I have observed in the case of the young of 

 water-birds before getting up their first feathers, and when 

 they are entirely covered with the egg down. These changes 

 seem connected with a great development of the wild ha- 

 bits, and attachment to, and knowledge of the localities 

 where they have first seen the light. As the barbata is until 

 this period in reality a land animal, the chief difficulty we 

 have to surmount with it is in the quality of the milk to be 

 given it. The vitulina is essentially an inhabitant of the 

 water from its birth, yet the care of the mother is perhaps 

 for weeks necessary to judge how long and how often it 

 should be on land, and this we can hardly expect to imi- 

 tate. In the young of this species a few days old, which we 

 have tried to rear, a want of knowledge of this kind of ma- 

 nagement may have led to failure. I have not attempted 

 to rear them at a greater age. The Greenland Seal is, I 

 have been informed, occasionally kept for a month or two 

 on board the whalers, and thrives sufficiently well on the 

 flesh of sea-birds. This species appears to bring forth in 

 January, and therefore has likely arrived at a hardy age be- 

 fore it is subjected to captivity. I know but comparatively 

 little of its capability of being easily tamed ; but this quality, 

 of itself, is no evidence of superior intelligence. Might it not 

 be easy to induce Greenland ship-masters to bring some of 

 these animals to England, where they would be accessible to 

 theobservation of zoologists. Onemode of attempting to tame 

 vol. viii. c 



