Seal

“ If it catches sight of a seal upon a drifting floe, it will slide quietly into the sea, swim with only the tip of its nose above the water, and, diving under the floe, reach the very spot which the hapless seal has regarded as an oasis of safety. ”

“ The seal stretches his head above the waves, not comprehending what has disturbed the repose of his asylum, while the rapacious skua pursues the puffin and gull. High in the air the birds seem like bees clustering about the rocks, whilst lower they fly past so close that they might be knocked down with a stick. ”

“ An occasional seal, that put up its half-human head to peer at us, or a sparrow or butterfly, that hovered about us when we neared the shore, or now and then a flock of water-fowl, were the only living things we saw. ”

“ I well remember the first seal I shot. I had landed on the weather-side of a small island. A cautious reconnoitring discovered a good-sized seal ‘lying up’ on a detached rock. Then I commenced the stalking, closely followed by my dog. But ere I could approach within range, one of those seal-sentinels and provoking tormentors of the seal-hunter, a herring gull, set up his wild warning scream. The seal perfectly understood what it meant, at once took the alarm, plunged into the water, and disappeared. ”

“ A seal comes to its rock there before the tide has sufficiently gone down to let it lie upon it. It plays about the rock, fawns upon it, caresses it, woos it, one might say, dives down and circumnavigates it, tries or pretends to try to lie upon it, even under the water, swims away and returns, and does the same thing several times; and as soon as the water is sufficiently shallow to allow of it, it reclines, sea-washed and gently heaving, till the receding tide leaves it high and dry. A pretty thing it is—very—to see a seal thus waiting for its chosen rock to appear. ”

“ Their mere ways of moving must often be infinite joys to them, seeing that besides the motion itself—as with this seal, the gnu, or the springbok, the half-flying arboreal monkey, or the soaring bird—there is the ecstasy of perfect health and strength and the freedom of perfect nudity—absolute disencumbrance. ”

“ If you have ever examined the head of a seal, with its large gentle eyes, you will readily believe that the animal possesses a certain amount of intellect, and is capable of very affectionate feelings.
The story I am about to tell you is a very sad one. Perhaps you will recollect the seal in the Zoological Gardens, which used to come out of its pond at the call of the French sailor to whom it belonged, and, climbing up while he sat on a chair, put its fins round his neck and give him a kiss. ”

“ And now, still more markedly than yesterday, I note that the favourite attitude of a seal, when lying asleep or dozing, is either on its back or half or three-quarters rolled over towards it. Out of all these twelve, only one lies in the way that all illustrations persist in depicting them as lying. Three are absolutely on their backs, with their faces, or rather chins, looking, for long periods, straight up into the sky ”

“ Also, though he often pegtops it, he has never yet pointed his nose straight up into the sky, which my bottle-nosed seal invariably does. Generally he soon adopts the horizontal attitude, and continues in it for the rest of the time he is up. When he goes down, he rolls round, as well as over—by which I mean both like a porpoise and like a barrel—and then his spotted, or rather blotched, belly makes a splendid mosaic under the water, for it is not only itself, which were enough of beauty, but the most lovely glaucous green is flung upon it, through which, all glorified, the pattern appears. ”

“ After sinking down—down—nobody knows how far, they at length reached a door, which, being open, led them into a range of apartments, filled with inhabitants—not people, but seals, who could nevertheless speak and feel like human folk; and how much was the seal-killer surprised to find that he himself had been unconsciously transformed into the like image! If it were not so, he would probably have died, from the want of breath. The nature of the poor fisher’s thoughts may be more easily conceived than described. ”

“ The seal, therefore, really looks shorewards, but across a narrow strip of sea. His eyes, I notice, seem never shut, and at frequent intervals he turns his head to one side or another. All the rest lie either sleeping or dozing, though, as said before, most of them from time to time raise their heads a little and give a lazy look before sinking back into slumber. Is the one seal a sentinel? ”

“ A small seal playing by himself near the shore, floating on and diving under the breakers, is not so very disagreeable, especially if he comes so near that you can see his pathetic eyes; but these brutes in this perpetual summer resort are disgustingly attractive. ”

“ Their bed-times are not governed by the ebb and flow of the sea.
The larger seal which I spoke of yesterday is called here, locally, a bottle-nosed seal, or at least some so designate it. He is here again to-day, rising at intervals and staring at the sky, in the other of these two-in-one-contained bays, which seems to be more particularly his own. When he rises he remains for a full minute standing upright, as it were, in the water, with his muzzle about six inches above it and pointing straight into the sky. ”

“ This was a delightful experience to the ferryman, and the sight of the dog-like creature swimming after the boat was also an entertainment to the passengers and a cause of surprise to many. But there was nothing remarkable in its action; the seal, like the dog, is a social creature; it is well known that he readily grows tame towards, and even attached to, the human beings he is accustomed to see who do not persecute him. ”

“ The round, plump, expressive face of a seal, the beautiful, limpid eyes, the hand-like fore-paws, the sleek body, tapering towards the flattened hinder fins, which are directed backwards, and spread out in the form of a broad fin, like the tail of a fish, might well give the idea of an animal having the anterior part of its body human and the posterior half piscine.
In the habits of the seals, also, we may trace those of the supposed mermaid, and the more easily the better we are acquainted with them. All seals are fond of leaving the water frequently. ”

“ It is curious that the one seal that lies on its face is the only one out of the twelve that is turned towards the sea. The sea, however, in this case is only a narrow inlet between the rock on which it lies and the shore, the great expanse of it being entirely hidden by the rock itself, which rises perpendicularly, like a cliff, from the highest point of its upward slope. ”

“ When a seal makes its appearance within twenty or thirty yards of the hunter the harpoon, thus arranged, is thrown, and if the seal is struck, the ivory head, which becomes buried in the flesh, is detached from the shank, and as the seal plunges about, or dives, the line is quickly unwound from the floating handle. ”

“ We lose sight, then, of the limbs, and see very little more than the feet, which are disguised by being turned into flippers.
Now if we once think what is the object of a seal’s life, this curious change in its body is at once explained. For seals are the hunters of the sea; fish-food is to them what flesh-food is to lions, wolves, and bears, only that they have a much wider field to hunt in, for they have the whole ocean306 for their feeding ground, and no one to dispute it with them but the sea-otter in places near the land, and the porpoises and other fish-feeding whales out at sea. ”

“ Seals are observed every day; on one occasion a seal-mother giving a curious display of maternal solicitude in teaching her calf to swim. First taking hold of it by the flipper, and for a while supporting it above water, with a shove she sends the youngster adrift, leaving it to shift for itself. In a short time the little creature becomes exhausted ”

“ The captain was equally anxious to get some seal-skins, and he told us that, after we had visited the wreck, and explored the island, we should try and catch some of the animals.
Seals are curious-looking creatures. The head, with its large mild eyes, and snout, and whiskers, looks like that of some good-natured, intelligent dog; and one expects, as they are swimming, to see four legs and a thin curly tail come out of the water. Instead of that, the body narrows away till there is seen a tail like that of a fish. ”

“ A seal can sleep as comfortably on the water as on shore. To sleep it turns on its back, holds its nose and feet above the surface, and takes a profound nap, gently rocked by the waves.
“While the young seals are on shore the big seals defend them and take care of them so long as they keep at home. If they wander away, even though they do not go out of sight, they pay no attention to them. ”

“ The expressive countenance and great intelligence of the seal, the readiness with which it can be domesticated, and the attachment which, as a pet, it shows to man, have not unnaturally led to stories of its being a form assumed by, or assigned to, some higher intelligence from choice or by compulsion. ”

“ Suddenly up goes the seal's head so quickly that the hunter hasn't time to subside as before, but begins to roll about, blow off steam, and lift its feet around like a seal flapping its tail, and at a little distance it is really difficult to tell which is the seal and which the man. ”

“ How it has escaped them that we must have a common ancestor with the seal, I know not. And yet it is a well-ascertained fact that the brain of a seal in size and general appearance more nearly resembles that of man than does the brain of any other animal; and look at the position and appearance of a seal's head when he comes to the surface of the water: can anything more closely resemble the head of a man in like circumstances? ”

“ Birds have no ears, nor have crocodiles, nor frogs, nor snakes. Ears seem to be for beasts only. And not for all beasts. Seals are divided by naturalists into two great families—those with ears, and those without. The common seal belongs to the latter class, and the sea-lion to the former. A common seal lives in the sea, and when it does wriggle up on the beach of an iceberg there is nothing to hear, I suppose, or perhaps when it wants to listen it raises a flipper to its ear. ”

“ The seal (K) universally given to him is totally unlike the English seals, and resembles the usual form of the seals of the French kings: its diameter is less, and in lieu of the English mounted figure on the obverse, we find, as in the French seals, a small counter seal as it is called, not quite an inch and a half in diameter. The legend is "Henricus Dei gracia, Francorum et Anglie Rex." Now I have shewn from Rymer and the Rolls of Parliament, that one golden and two silver seals, of which one was a small one, were employed during this reign. ”

“ This order embraces several species of the seal kind, which are found in all seas, but chiefly in those of the polar regions. Their structure is admirably adapted to their mode of life; the nostrils and ears both closing when the animal dives. Its hind feet alone are used for swimming. Its movements on land are slow and painful, dragging itself along like a reptile. ”

“ This new being, the Seal, lighter, a good fisher, getting his subsistence in the sea, but living on the land, will employ his life in endeavoring to return to it, to climb the rock to which his females and their offspring await his return from fishing. ”

“ I am the last of the Lost Rookery of Masafuera, and in the days when men killed us by the hundred thousand there was a story on the beaches that some day a white seal would come out of the north and lead the seal people to a quiet place. ”

“ Equipped with a seal spear, and dressed in the warmest of furs, with feet padded with bearskin to muffle their tread, and with small three-legged stools, men, boys, and even women may be seen sitting for hours beside a hole in the ice waiting for a seal to appear for a breath of air. Occasional seals were always captured on our way to and from winter quarters, and they frequently appeared near the ship during the winter. ”

“ The rock where the great seal always lay was a mass of seaweed, and I have mentioned having seen the common ones both play with, and help pull themselves up by, the long brown kind. I cannot help thinking, therefore, that seals do not exercise much choice in any of these respects, but are governed more by circumstances, selecting rocks which, on the whole, they find convenient, and which may be now of one kind, and now another. ”

“ I do not think a seal’s range of vision on land, or out of the water, is very great. I have frequently experimented with adult fur-seals, by allowing them to catch sight of my person, so as to distinguish it as of foreign character, three and four hundred paces off, taking the precaution of standing quietly to the leeward when the wind was blowing strong, and then walking unconcernedly up to them. ”

“ When a seal is thus engaged the hunter, clad in seal-skin garments, endeavors to make his way between the seal and the air-hole, a process demanding endless patience and involving much fatigue. The hunter lies either on his face or side, and makes his advances while the animal dozes or is looking elsewhere. If obliged to move while the seal is awake, the native makes his advances by a series of awkward motions like those of a seal making its way over the ice. ”

“ They are permitted frequently to halt and cool off, as heating them injures their fur. These seal-halts on the road always impressed me with a species of sentimentalism and regard for the creatures themselves. When the men drop back for a few moments, that awkward shambling and scuffling of the march at once ceases, and the seals stop in their tracks to fan themselves with their hind flippers, while their heaving flanks give rise to subdued panting sounds. ”