278 



THE FIN-FOOTED ANIMALS. 



or lies down, to give the boat the appearance of a 

 lifeless object, drifting in the water. If the Seal 

 dabbles in the water and is bewildered in its play, 

 sometimes looking at the hunter, the latter whistles 

 to make it feel more secure. If it still happens 

 to dive before it is within a harpoon's throw, the 

 hunter watches the direction of its course, changes 

 his position slightly, and when it comes to the sur- 

 face keeps it constantly in view. When he at last 

 approaches sufficiently near to it, he throws the 

 harpoon at it, the line following the spear. As the 

 harpoon has barbed hooks, he sees immediately 

 whether the Seal has been hit or not; for if the animal 

 is struck it cannot easily get off, but drags more and 

 more on the line. No time must then be lost; as 

 soon as the hunter sees that the Seal is hit, he must 

 throw the bladder out of the boat, for otherwise the 

 boat itself would be dragged by the Seal when the 

 line had all been unwound and might easily turn 

 over. These are the causes why Greenland Sealers 

 so often lose their lives; for if a Seal once drags a 

 hunter away and no companion who could come to 

 the rescue is nigh, he can seldom be saved. But if 

 he manages to throw the bladder out in proper time 

 the greatest danger is past. Occasionally so coura- 

 geous a Seal is met that it charges at the thin boat 

 made of skins, and bites a hole in it, the hunter run- 

 ning the risk of sinking. Therefore this hunt is a 

 perilous one in many respects, and many Green- 

 landers do not hazard it without reflection. 



" But if the Seal drags the bladder, which he can 

 rarely pull beneath the surface, along the course of 

 , its flight, the hunter keeps the bladder in sight, fol- 

 lows it and tries to kill the Seal with spears. These 

 spears have no barbed hooks, but slip out of the 

 wound and float on the water, as soon as they are 

 thrown at the Seal. These many wounds, and the 

 dragging of the large, air-filled bladder, tire the Seal 

 out. When the hunter at last approaches close to it, 

 he deals the Seal a mortal blow on its nose with the 

 fist, which stuns it, or, if it be necessary, he stabs 

 it with a knife. Then the animal is prepared before 

 its captor takes it home. All wounds are stopped 

 with little pieces of wood, lest the blood should flow 

 out, then air is blown between the skin and flesh, so 

 that the carcass will float better. If several others 

 are caught, they are fastened to the first one, and 

 a lucky sportsman may bring home four or five at 

 once." 



All Seals are remarkably tenacious of life and 

 are killed instantly only when a bullet pierces the 

 brain or the heart. Besides Man, the Seals have an 

 enemy in the quick Killer-Whale, before which all 

 the smaller Seals fly in abject terror. Pursued by 

 this voracious monster, they jump in rapidly suc- 

 ceeding leaps high above the water, resort to all 

 tricks in swimming and diving, try to gain small 

 straits and shallows, hurry to the shore, and in their 

 deadly terror forget even their dread of Man. The 

 Polar Bear also pursues them relentlessly and, as 

 we have seen, he knows how to seize upon them 

 with tolerable skill. Young Seals probably also 

 suffer from the attacks of large fishes. 



Manifold The northern nations use the entire 

 Uses of the Seal, not only oil and skin, as we 

 Seals. do, and the flesh besides, as do the 



Swedes and Norwegians. The intestines are eaten, 

 or, after they have been thoroughly cleaned and 

 smoothed out, they are manufactured into windows, 

 clothes and curtains. A garment, the capisad of the 

 Greenlanders, is made up out of them and highly 



valued on account of its excellent waterproof qual- 

 ities. The blood, mixed with sea water, is boiled 

 and eaten as soup, or after it is frozen, as a dainty, 

 or it is shaped into balls after cooking, dried in the 

 sun and stored away for future use in hard times. 

 The ribs are used to stretch the skins or are manu- 

 factured into nails; the shoulder-blades are formed 

 into spades; the tendons are made into thread, etc. 

 Yet the chief profit to the Greenlanders accrues 

 from the skin, oil and meat. 



The Common The species whose life has served us 



Seal, the Typical as the type in the preceding re- 

 Speoies. marks, is the Common Seal {Phoca 

 vitulina), an animal widely spread over northern 

 seas and also common in the German waters. The 

 length of an adult specimen, measured from the 

 snout to the tip of the tail, varies between sixty- 

 four and seventy-six inches and, strange to say, the 

 females are larger than the males. The head is egg- 

 shaped, the snout short, the eye is large, dark and 

 has an intelligent expression; the ear is- indicated 

 only by a small, triangular elevation; the upper lip 

 is thick, but very mobile and grown with stiff 

 whisker-hairs; the neck is short and thick, the body 

 tapers almost uniformly from the shoulders to the 

 tail. The fur consists of stiff, lustrous hairs, the 

 general coloring of which is a yellowish gray, re- 

 lieved by a number of irregular brownish or black 

 spots, distributed all over the upper surface. 



Extensive ^ange The Common Seal ranges through- 



,, of the Com- out all northern parts of the Atlantic 

 mon Seal. Ocean, including all parts of the Arc- 

 tic Ocean. Beginning. at the Mediterranean, into 

 which it occasionally penetrates through the Straits 

 of Gibraltar, it inhabits the entire Atlantic coast of 

 Europe and the Baltic Sea, where it is almost as 

 plentiful in the Gtilfs of Bothnia and Finland as in 

 the Sound and the Little and Great Belt; it also 

 occurs in the White Sea and, according to some ac- 

 counts, also along the coast of northern Siberia and 

 from Behring Strait to California; it certainly has 

 been observed in' Spitzbergen, on both coasts of 

 Greenland, Davis Strait, Baffin's Bay and Hudson 

 Bay and it goes rather far to the south along the 

 eastern coast of North America, being by no means 

 a rare visitor in the Gulf of Mexico, and in a few 

 cases also of the northern coasts of South America. 

 Not infrequently it goes from the sea for a long dis- 

 tance up some river and is therefore often found far 

 from the seashore; 



Different Species The Common Seal is not the only 

 of the Otdi- one frequenting the German coast, 

 nary Seals. for there also are quite regularly 

 found the Gray Seal {Halichcerus grypus) and the 

 Ringed Seal {Phoca fcetida). The Monk Seal {Stenor- 

 hynchus albiventer) is more rarely met with there, 

 being indigenous to the Mediterranean, and the 

 Crested Seal or Hooded Seal {Cystophora cristata)^ 

 which is a native of high latitudes, is also seldom 

 seen so far south as the German shores. 



The Caspian Seal {Phoca caspica) is a species 

 closely allied to the Common Seal, and, as its name 

 implies, it lives in the Caspian Sea, cut off from any 

 communication with the ocean. 



Characteristics The Saddle-Back Seal [also called 

 of the Saddle- the Greenland Seal and Harp Seal} 

 Back Seal. {Phoca graenlandica^ differs from the 

 Common Seal in its longer and narrower head, a 

 flatter forehead and longer muzzle, as well as in the 

 structure of the hand. The prevailing color of an 

 old male is a light or dark tawny gray on the upper 



