MARINE CARNIVORA 125 
One old male shot off the coast of Connemara weighed nearly 400 lbs., and was 8 feet long. It 
is found off Scandinavia and. eastwards to the coast of Greenland, and breeds off our coasts in 
October and November. This is the large seal occasionally shot up Scotch lochs. Its colour is 
yellowish gray, varied with blots and patches of dirty black and brown. 
THE Common SEAL. 
This seal is smaller than the preceding. It breeds on parts of the Welsh and Cornish coasts, 
and is found on both sides of the Atlantic and in the North Pacific. It assembles in small herds, and 
frequents lochs, estuaries, and river mouths. In the summer it is fond of following flounders and 
sea-trout up rivers. A few years ago one came up the Thames and was shot at Richmond. The 
young are born in June, and are grayish white. The adults are variously mottled with gray, 
brown, and. black. The fondness of seals for music is proverbial. Macgillivray, the Scotch 
naturalist, said that in the Hebrides he could bring half a score of them within forty yards of him 
by a few notes on his flute, when they would swim about with their heads above water like so 
many black dogs. A seal was captured by the servants of a landowner near Clew Bay, on the 
west coast of Ireland, and kept. tame for four years. It became so attached to the house that, 
after being carried out to sea three times, it returned on each occasion. The cruel wretches who 
owned it then blinded it, out of curiosity to see whether it could find its way back sightless. 
The poor animal did so after eight days. 
The common seal is still fairly numerous on the rocky western coasts of the British ‘slands, 
though a few old seals, unable to forget their early habits, appear now and then in Morecambe 
Bay and in the Solway. It is not uncommon off the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland. It also 
frequents a sand-bank in the Dornoch Firth, though it has been much persecuted there. The 
common seal is gregarious, while 
the gray seal usually lives only in 
pairs, or at most in small com- 
panies. Two or three dozen like 
to lie closely packed on shore with 
all their heads turning seawards. 
The white hair of the young seals 
—which, as already said, are born 
in June—is shed in a day or two, 
when the young take to the water. 
With regard to their reputed-mu- 
sical proclivities, some experi- 
ments made at the Zoological 
Gardens did not bear out this 
belief; but there is much evi- 
dence that in a state of nature 
they will approach and listen to jo 
music. The common:seal has a’ 
large brain capacity, and is a very 
intelligent creature. The upper 
parts of this seal are yellowish 
gray, spotted with black and 
brown, the under parts being 
silver-gray. 
é : By permission of Hire Carl Hagenbecl] [Hamburg 
The Harp-sEar is an Arctic 
. 1 which . find WALRUS AND SEA-LION 
or ice-seal which sometimes finds Another photograph of the walrus tamed by Herr Carl Hagenbeck. Notice the sea-lion in 
its way here. The young are born the right-hand corner, which also formed one of the same performing troupe 
9 
