328 
VERTEBRATA. 
THE HAEP SEAL. 
skin of the same ground-color, bat without bands, and with unequal, well-defined, angular, brown 
spots, thrown, as it were, at hazard, on different places of the upper and lower part of the body. 
The ground-color of the old male is gray-white, and his length is five feet. The face is entirely 
black. According to Crantz, " when newly born this species is quite white and woolly. In the 
first year it is cream-colored; in the second, gray; in the third, painted with stripes; in the fourth, 
spotted ; and in the fifth, wears half-moons as the sign of its maturity." It is found in the Frozen 
Ocean, Greenland, Newfoundland, Iceland, the White Sea, and Kamtschatka. 
According to Fabricius, this species is very numerous in the deep bays and the mouths of the 
rivers in Greenland. They leave the coast twice a year; at first in March, returning in May; 
again in June, and reappearing in September. Their young — one, rarely two, at a birth — are 
brought forth in spring, and are suckled on the ice far from shore. They avoid the fixed ice, but 
live and sleep in vast herds near the floating ice-islands, among which they are sometimes seen 
swimming in great numbers, under the guidance of one who seems to act as leader and sentinel 
for the whole. Their food consists of all kinds of fish, shell-fish included, but they prefer the arc- 
tic salmon. When on the feed, and one comes to the surface to breathe, he lifts his head only 
above the water, and quickly dives without changing his place. These seals swim in many atti- 
tudes, on their back, on their sides, as well as in the ordinary position, and occasionally whirl 
themselves about, as if in sport. They sleep frequently on the water, and are considered incau- 
tious, especially on the ice. 
They are said to have a great dread of the toothed whales. If a grampus perceive a seal of 
any species basking on floating ice, it is asserted that he does his best to upset the ice or beat the 
seal off with his fins, when the latter becomes an easy prey. 
Crantz avers that this is a careless, stupid seal, and that it is the only one which the Green- 
lander will venture to attack alone. He goes to hunt it in his kajak, which is in the form of a 
weaver's shuttle. When he perceives a seal, he endeavors to surprise it unawares, with the wind 
and sun in his back, that he may be neither heard nor seen. He approaches it rapidly, but 
silently, till within four or six fathoms. He then takes hold of the oar in his left hand, and 
with his right throws the harpoon. If it is fixed, the Greenlander throws the attached buoy over- 
board on the same side that the seal dives, and he dives upon the instant. The struck victim 
■often carries the buoy under Avater, but, wearied and wounded, it must at last come up to breathe. 
The Greenlander, who is on the watch, now attacks it with his long lance till the animal is ex- 
hausted, when he releases it from its sufi'erings with his short lance, aaid then blows it up like a 
bladder that it may swim the easier after his kajak. This is a service of danger to the seal-hunter. 
If the line should be entangled, or if it should catch hold of the kajak, an oar, the hunter's hand, 
or his neck, as it sometimes does when the wind is high, or if the seal should make a sudden turn 
