418 
Islands of Scotland’ (171G), says, tliat wlien they assembled to 
bring forth their young, which took place in the month of October, 
an annual attack was made upon them by the natives, and that as 
many as 320, old and young, have been killed at one tiine.'^- In 
1837 it appears still to have been well known on the Hebrides,! 
and in 1880 Mr. Alston ! speaking of this species says, that it is 
“very abundant on the rocky shores of the outer Hebrides 
and among the Orkney and Shetland Islands.” Professor Turner 
also gives some interesting information with regard to the breeding 
of this species in the same locality, in a paper “On the Placentation 
of Seals,” published in the ‘Transactions’ of the Eoyal Society 
of Edinburgh (vol. xxvii., 1875, p. 289). On the Earn Islands, 
according to Mr. Selby, || about 100 years ago, they were very 
abundant, but owing, first to the depredations committed by a 
“ respectable individual ” who rented the islands, and who himself 
in 1778, killed seventy-two young ones, and subsequently to the 
disturbance caused by the erection of the lighthouse on the island 
which formed their chief place of resort, they were at the time he 
writes (1841) greatly reduced in number. In the 2wesent day the 
vast increase in the number of vessels navigating the seas sur- 
rounding the British Isles, and more especially the disturbance 
produced by the numerous steam-shqjs, will probably soon drive 
these grand beasts from their former resorts, and it may be that 
to this cause the aijpearance of the Grey Seal in so unsuitable a 
locality as the sand banks of the Wash is to be attributed. 
*Pinkerton’s ‘Collection of Voyages and Travels,’ vol. ill. p. 594 (4to. 1809). 
t Wilson, Mag. Zool. and Bot. vol. i. (1837) pp. 540—541. 
+ ‘ Fauna of Scotland,’ Nat. Hist. Soc. of Glasgow, p. 15. 
fl Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. vi. (1841) pp. 46'2 — 466. 
