128 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
great difficulty driven into the sea. The females give birth to their young soon after their 
arrival. The new-born young ones are almost black, unlike the adults, which are of a light slate- 
brown. They are suckled by the female for some time, and then left to themselves, lying on the 
beach, where they seem to grow fat without further feeding. They are always allowed by the 
sealers to lie like this, ‘in order to make more oil. This account was corroborated by all the sealers | 
I met, but I do not understand it. Probably the cows visit their offspring unobserved from time . 
to time. Péron says that both parent elephant-seals stay with the young without taking any 
food at all till the latter are about six or seven weeks old, and that the old ones conduct the 
young to the water and carefully keep them company. The rapid increase in weight is in 
accordance with Péron’s account. Goodridge gives a somewhat different story—namely, that 
after the females leave the young the old males and the pups proceed inland, as far as two miles 
sometimes, and stop without food for more than a month, during which time they lose fat. The 
male sea-elephants come ashore for the purpose of breeding about the middle of August, the 
females a little later.” 
Formerly the elephant-seals were found as far north as the Californian coast, where their 
capture was the main business of the sealing-traders. This species also formed the mainstay of 
the far southern sealers. As the elephant-seals were killed off, so the business became less and 
less profitable. It is to be hoped that the voyages of exploration to the Antarctic ice-fringe will 
not lead to the discovery of fresh sealing-grounds, for if this is the case there is little chance that 
any of the southern seals will escape entire destruction. Some form of close time has already 
been enforced in the pursuit of the hair-seals of Northern Europe; but it is very desirable that 
the species still found on our own coasts should also receive protection. Except when they paid 
visits to the fixed salmon-nets, they never did any harm; and fixed nets are now illegal. When 
a seal learned the use of the stake-nets, which these animals were very quick to understand, it 
would wait quietly till it saw a fish caught, and then swim up and carry it off before the fisher- 
men could take it. 
Two species—namely, the Common Seat and Gray Seat—still regularly visit our shores. 
The common seal breeds on our southwestern coasts, and the gray seal off the Hebrides. If the 
common seal were accorded a close time, its numbers would probably increase ; and the spectacle 
of such interesting creatures visible on our coast could not fail to be of great interest. All the 
old legends of mermaids and wild men of the sea are based on the capture of seals. Perhaps the 
most ancient is one which records such a capture in the river near Orford Castle, in Suffolk, in 
the reign of Henry II. The ignorant soldiers were persuaded that it was a man, and tortured it 
to make it speak. They then took it 
to the church, and showed it the 
sacred emblems. As it “ showed no 
reverence,” they took it back to the 
castle, and fed it on fish. It was al- 
lowed to go into the river, but re- 
turned to its captors of its own accord. 
Later it swam away to the sea. The 
monk who recorded the story stated 
his conviction that this seal was an 
evil spirit which had got into the 
body of a drowned sailor. A gray 
seal was taken not many years ago in 
the creek leading up to the little town 
of Wells, in Norfolk. It was so tame 
By permtssion of the Hon, Walter Rothschild) [Tring : 
HARP-SEAL that the fishermen caught it by throw- 
The harp-seal comes from Greenland ing coats over it as it lay on the mud. 
