4 o 4 WHALES, SEALS, AND SEA-SERPENTS 



The adult male is whitish in colour, with a great black 

 belt across the shoulders and down each side, which 

 saddle-shaped mark only becomes fully formed about 

 the fifth year. The female is much smaller ; the young 

 are pale grey, with dark spots. Still larger than the 

 Greenland Seal is the Bearded Seal (Erignathus bar- 

 batus), the Ogdook of the Esquimaux, which grows to 

 a length of 9 or 10 feet. It is sometimes called the 

 Square-Flipper Seal. It is not uncommon in Norway. 

 On the other side of the Atlantic it goes as far south 

 as Labrador, and is also found both in the Greenland 

 and the Siberian seas. The Grey Seal (Halichcerus 

 gryphus) is nowhere very abundant, but comes occa- 

 sionally to our own coasts. It is confined to the 

 Atlantic region. It is light grey in colour, and the 

 male grows to 8 or 9 feet long. There is — or used in 

 recent years to be — a breeding-place of this seal on 

 the Fro Islands, off the Trondhjem Fjord, where about 

 100 young were reared annually, and there are larger 

 breeding-places near Hammerfest ; but its numbers are 

 of late years greatly diminished. Indeed, the habit 

 of resorting, as this seal and the Greenland Seal do, 

 to a common breeding-place, instead of going in 

 solitary pairs, as the Common Seal does, would seem 

 to be a sad disadvantage for the species in its struggle 

 for existence with mankind. The last of the northern 

 seals is the Hooded Seal (Cystophora cristata). This 

 is a moderately large seal, the male being about 8 feet 

 long, and the female 7 feet. In colour it is bluish- 

 black, with whitish spots ; but the young, as in the 

 Harp or Greenland Seal, are born white. The head is 

 small, and bears in the male a very curious muscular 

 sac, which is capable of inflation, and when fully 

 stretched measures about 12 inches long by 9 inches 

 high. This seal seems to be most abundant in the 



