CHAP. 111.] 
SEALS AND WHALES. 
1G5 
seal-fishing in these waters, and the bearded seal is still killed 
yearly by thousands. Their value is reckoned in settling 
accounts between owners and hunters at twenty to twenty-five 
Scandinavian crowns (say 22s. to 27s. Qd.). 
Groenlands or Jan-Mayen-saelen, the Greenland seal (Phoca 
Groenlandica Muller), which at Jan Mayen gives occasion to so 
profitable a fishing, also is of general occurrence among the 
drift-ice in the Murman and Kara seas. 
Snadden, the rough or bristled seal {Phoca hispida, Erxl.) is also 
common on the coast. These animals in particular are seen to 
lie, each at its hole, on the ice of fjords, which has not been 
broken up. It also many times follows with curiosity in the 
wake of a vessel for long distances, and can then be easily shot, 
because it is often so fat that, unlike the two other kinds of 
seals, it does not sink when it has been shot dead in the 
water. 
Xlapmytsen, the bladdernose seal, {Cystophora cristata, Erxl.) 
the walrus-hunters say they have never seen on Kovaya Zemlya, 
but it is stated to occur yearly in pretty large numbers among 
the ice W.S.W. of South Cape on Spitzbergen. Only once 
during our many voyages in the Polar Sea has a Klapmyts been 
seen, viz , a young one that was killed in 1858 in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Bear Island. 
Of the various species of whales, the narwhal, distinguished 
by its long and valuable horn projecting in the longitudinal 
direction of the body from the upper jaw, now occurs so seldom on 
the coast of Novaya Zemlya that it has never been seen there 
by the Norwegian walrus-hunters. It is more common at Hope 
Island, and Witsen states (p. 903) that large herds of narwhals 
have been seen between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. 
The white whale or beluga, of equal size with the narwhal, 
on the other hand, occurs in large shoals on the coasts of 
Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, especially near the mouths of 
fresh-water streams. These animals were formerly captured, but 
