COMMON SEAft. 
188 
We are not'certainly informed how long the fe- 
males continue pregnant ; but if we may judge 
from the time which intervenes between their de- 
parture from the Greenland coasts and their re- 
turn, they cannot go above seven or eight months 
at the farthest. How long this animal lives is 
also unknown : a gentleman, whom Dr. Gold- 
smith knew in Ireland, kept two of them, which 
he had taken very young, in his house for ten 
years ; and they appeared to have the marks of 
age at the time he saw them, for they were grown 
grey about the muzzle ; and it is very probable 
they did not live many years longer. In their 
natural state the old ones are seen very fat and 
torpid, separated from the rest, and, as it should 
seem, incapable of procreation. 
As their chief food is fish, so they are very ex- 
pert at pursuing and catching it. In those places 
where the herrings are seen in shoals, the seals fre- 
quent and destroy them by thousands. When 
the herring retires, the seal is then obliged to 
hunt after fish that are stronger and more capa- 
ble of evading the pursuit : however, they are 
very swift in deep waters, dive with great rapi- 
dity, and, while the spectator eyes the spot at 
which they disappear, they are seen to emerge at 
$bove a hundred yards distance. The weaker 
fishes, therefore, have no other means to escape 
their tyranny, but by darting into the shallows. 
The seal has been seen to pursue a mullet, which 
jjs a swift swimmer, and to turn it to and fro, in 
$eep water, as a hound does a hare on land. The 
mill let has been seen trying every art of evasion ; 
and at last swimming into shallow water in hopes 
of escaping. There, however, the seal followed ; 
so that the little animal had no other way left to 
escape, but to t|irow itself on one side, by which 
means it darted into shoaler water than it could 
