6G NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



shores of the larger British Islands, it can occur as merely a rare straggler.* Its fossil remains 

 have been reported by Professor Turner as having been found in the brick clays of Scotland. It 

 ai)pears also to be a coramon species in the North Pacific, there being specimens in the National 

 Museum, unquestionably of this species, from the coast of Alaska, and from Plover Bay, on the Sibe- 

 rian side of Bering's Strait. Its southern limit of distribution along the shores of the North Pacific, 

 ou either the American or the Asiatic side, cannot at present be given. Judging from its known 

 distribution in other portions of the arctic waters, there is no reason to infer its absence from the 

 northern shores of Eastern Asia and Western North America. 



Habits, prodxtots, and hunting. — The Ringed Seal is pre-eminently boreal, its home being 

 almost exclusively the icy seas of the arctic regions. Its favorite resorts are said to be retired 

 bays and fjords, in which it remains so long as they are filled with firm ice; when this breaks up 

 the.\ betake themselves to the floes, where they bi'ing forth their young. It is essentially a littoral, 

 or rather glacial species, being seldom met with in the open sea. From its abundance in its chosen 

 haunts it is a species well known to arctic voyagers, and frequent reference is made to it in most 

 of the nairatives of arctic explorations.^ 



The habits of the Ringed Seal, as observed in European waters, seem to agree with what has 

 already been related respecting their life-history in Davis's Strait and Cumberland Sound. Malm- 

 gren, for example, states that the females bring forth their young on the western coast of Finland, 

 on the ice, near the edge of great ojienings, between the 24th of February and the 25th of March, or 

 at the time given by Fabricius and later writers for the same event on the coast of Greenland, and 

 in no respect does their mode of life appear to differ in the icy seas about Spitzbergen from what 

 has already been related. 



The Ringed Seal is of far less commercial value than the Harp Seal, but in this respect may 

 be considered as holding the second rank among the northern Phocids. Brown states that "it is 

 chiefly looked upon and taken as a curiosity by the whalers, who consider it of very little commer- 

 cial importance and call it ' Floe-rat.'" Von Heuglin, however, states that many thousands are 

 annually taken by the sealers for their skins and fat, in the vicinity of Nova Zembla and Spitz- 

 bergen. It is of the greatest importance, however, to the Esquimaux and other northern tribes, 

 by whom it is captured for food and clothing. Mr. Brown .informs us that it forms, during the 

 latter part of summer and autumn, "the i)rincipal article of food in the Danish settlements, and 

 on it the writer of these notes and his companions dined many a time; we even learned to like it 

 and to become quite epicurean connoisseurs in all the qualities, titbits, and dishes of the well- 

 beloved Neitsik! The skin," he continues, ''forms the chief material ol clothing in North Green- 

 land. All of the III -oXX<n dress- in Neitsik breeches and jumpers; and we sojourners from a far 

 country soon encased ourselves in the somewhat hisj/id but most comlbrtable nether garments. It 

 is only high dignitaries like 'Herr Inspektor' that can aftbrd such extravagance as a Kassigiak 

 {Gallocephaltis vituUnus) wardrobe! The arctic fteites monopolize them all." Rink states that tiie 

 number annually captured in South Greenland has been calculated at 51,000. Capt. J. C. Ross 



'Respecting the southeru limit of the habitat of this species in Europe, Professor Flowir has the foDowing: : 

 "Nilssou speaks of it as being found ou all the Scandinavian coasts, and as haviuft been nn-t with as far south as the 

 Channel, on the strength of specimens in the Paris Museum from that locality; but ho was unable to find any proofs 

 of its having been mot with on the coast of England. Nor have I been able to discover any posilive evldince that it 

 can, at the present day, be reckoned a British species, although there is little doubt ihat it nmst occasionally visit cur 

 shores, where its occurrence would be easily overlooked." — Proc. Zool. Soc. Loud., 1871, p. 150. 



CoUett, contrary to the testimony of Nilsson, excludes it from the mammalian fauna of Norway, aud states that 

 he does not know of an authentic instance of its capture on the Norwegian coast. — Bemserkninger til Norges PattedjT- 

 fauna, 1876, p. 57, foot-note 2. 



' In AUen's Pinnipeds, Z. c, is a long and interesting account of their habits, from the pen of Ludwig Kumlien. 



