302 
THE STORY OF THE SEAL . 
with impunity; but when a number of the animals are on the rock, and 
through a sudden fright rush headlong into the water, some of them are 
pretty sure to be caught. A third method employed in the same country is 
to fix a harpoon in a tube, with a spring-and-trigger arrangement, and to 
bury the whole contrivance in a hole bored in a seal-rock in such a manner 
that when a seal presses against the trigger the weapon will be discharged 
into its body. 
A large number of seals are also shot on the shore with rifles; and others 
fall to the harpoon of the Esquimaux, who either steals up to them while 
asleep, or awaits their rising at a breathing-hole. When a large number of 
seals can be surprised on shore at one of their favorite landing-places, club¬ 
bing is resorted to as the most effectual and speedy means of despatch; and 
it is said that sometimes as many as 15,000 have been killed in this manner 
in one night. 
The above methods apply only to sealing on or near the shore; but for 
the capture of seals on the ice-floes at long distances from land, vessels of 
some kind have to be specially equipped. In the Gulf of Bothnia these 
expeditions are or were carried out in open boats, each manned by eight 
sailors; but in the Newfoundland and Jan-Mayen seas steamers of consider¬ 
able size are now employed. When the seals are found on the ice, they are 
killed in the same way as on shore, that is, either by shooting, harpooning, 
or clubbing. 
The strange circumstance that young seals take to the water reluctantly, 
and have to be taught the art of swimming by their parents, would alone 
appear to be a sufficient indication that seals originally descended from land 
animals: Among some species the young remain entirely on the land or ice 
for the first two or three weeks of their existence, or until they have shed 
their first coat of woolly hair. Numbers of seals are destroyed by the Polar 
bear, while others fall victims to the rapacious killer-whale. Others again 
are frequently destroyed.by being jammed between ice-floes; and it is stated 
that thousands are sometimes killed by this means. The reduction in their 
numbers by all these causes is, however, trivial compared to those inflicted 
by man, who requires about a million and a half to supply his annual needs. 
So reckless, indeed, has been the destruction of seals, that some species are 
already well nigh exterminated, while others have been so reduced in num¬ 
bers as to render their pursuit no longer profitable. 
