266 PHOCIDiE. 



" The Halicharus whose photograph I sent to you in 

 1869, I had the good luck to shoot, and still more to 

 retrieve from deep water, close to a little rocky islet 

 called Eagle Rock, which lies off Connemara, between 

 Golam Island and the Isles of Arran. It was a full- 

 grown male, and had been known to frequent the loca- 

 lity for many years. I took from its skin a musket-ball, 

 which was embedded just between the skin and the 

 blubber, thus showing that the old veteran had been 

 under fire before. The beast sank at once on receiving 

 my bullet, leaving only a great patch of blood to show 

 the place, and we had to wait more than an hour before 

 the water became sufficiently clear to see him where he 

 was lying dead at the bottom. Then, by means of a 

 long pole borrowed from the gatherers of seaweed, to 

 which we attached a harpoon which I always carried with 

 me, we succeeded in raising our prize, and carried him 

 joyfully into Arran, where all the country people said it 

 was the biggest Seal they had ever seen. The weight on 

 scales in Dublin was 3| cwt. (near 400 lbs.). Its 

 extreme length, in a line from nose to end of flipper, 

 8 feet exactly ; girth of body at thickest, 5 ft. 3 in. ; 

 round the fore-arm, 121 ii^-j spread of flipper, 21 in. 

 In my own experience, they are the most difficult of 

 all animals to approach. During four days' Seal-hunting 

 last August I never got nearer than eighty yards of a 

 swimming head, and I have always found it extremely 

 hard to stalk them when out of water. 



" When lying on flat rocks or level sand-banks, the Seals 

 have a way of turning up their hind flippers and the 

 head at the same time, so as to form a kind of curve, 

 especially when they stretch themselves." 



If we turn from these home observations to the 

 accounts given of this species by northern naturalists, 



