SADDLE-BACKS ON THE ICE.
At birth the Saddle-backs are pure woolly white, this gradually assuming a yellowish tint when they take to the water a few weeks old. They then begin to change to a dark speckled, and afterwards a spotted hue, and are called “Hares” by the sealers. Next they become dark-bluish on the back, while the breast and belly are of a sombre silvery hue. They are now “blue-backs.” Getting more spotted, the peculiar saddle-shaped band begins to form as they approach maturity. While in the fifth and last stage, the male acquires that well-developed half-moon-shaped mark on each side, the veritable saddle from which this Seal derives its vernacular name. An adult male is five or six feet long, the female seldom as much. The former is tawny-grey, or with a tinge of yellow or even reddish-brown in the spots, and marked by the saddle or lyre-shaped dorsal bands; hence also the cognomen of Harp Seal. The muzzle and head are dark. The adult female is dirty-white or tawny-bluish, or dark-grey on the back, with widely-distributed irregular spotting, but seldom or never shows the saddles.
Rink says a full-grown Saddle-back weighs about 250 lbs., the skin and blubber over, and the flesh under, 100 lbs. The winter blubber may amount to 80 lbs., but in summer little more than a quarter of that. In Danish Greenland alone about 35,000 are captured annually. Its skin forms the useful covering of the “kayaks,” or Eskimo canoes. The above number is, however, not a tithe of the enormous quantities of these creatures that are each year destroyed in the Greenland (i.e., Spitzbergen), and Newfoundland Seal-fisheries. Of this important branch of British commerce it does not behove us to enter into detail, however interesting or appropriate to the subject. Suffice it to say, now chiefly from Dundee, a fleet of ships and powerful steamers built for the trade, proceed, at the end of February and the beginning of March, with a stoppage at the Shetlands to ship hardy seamen, to the pack-ice in the Arctic Sea. Heavy, dark, and dreary weather often awaits the mariners as they coast along the fields of ice. Into the broken-up floes they now and again push their way, and as fortune wills it they may or may not discover from the mast-head a herd in the distance. Occasionally, even during the night, the noise of a family in these dismal regions will be heard, and the ship is soon made fast to the ice hard by, for the Seals during the breeding season frequent such areas of the ice as enable them to have easy access to the water. Then all becomes activity and excitement on board, every man having an interest and share in the expected plunder. The object is, if possible, to approach unperceived, surround, or get between the animals and the water, and, above all, to secure the young, which are more easily killed, and the more lawful prey. The sealers are provided with spiked clubs, sharp knives, seal-guns, and “ruer-ruddies,” or ropes attached by broad belts over their shoulders. Watching their chance the men land in bands, approach cautiously, and commence their dreadful operations. The old Seals abide and guard their young, even endangering their own safety, and will raise themselves up, face, and severely bite the unwary hunter. Crack, crack go the guns, as the older animals endeavour to escape through the holes or towards the water. All and sundry are attacked; a blow of the club, or kick of a heavy sea-boot, despatches the young, while the more aged receive rougher usage ere they succumb. The work of murder goes on apace without stoppage, for once disturbed, no second chance may be allowed the hunter. Told off in batches, some of the men commence the work of skinning, and quickly turn out hide and blubber, throwing aside the (to them) useless carcass, while the skins are heaped in piles. Some collect these, fasten bundles by the rope, and drag them towards the boats, where other sailors are ready to receive them. Thus the murderous operation goes on while there is Seal to be killed, or weather permits the men to remain on the floe, for sometimes the latter will break up, a gale arise, and the poor fellows run even other untold risks. As for the personal appearance of the sealers, as they labour at the work of slaughter, they look the most ruffianly set of men in existence. They are dressed in the queerest caps and coats of various shapes, with smuggler-looking breeches and long boots; moustaches and beards are covered with a mass of frozen tobacco-juice, hoar-frost, and Seal’s blood. Their matted hair, gory, greasy, unwashed faces and hands, reek and smell with a strong taint of butchery. In truth, a spectator, seeing the lot, might almost fancy himself back amongst some of the old bloodthirsty pirates of the Spanish Main. However, they work very hard for their hire. The hides are dropped pell-mell into the hold, and as soon as suiting time arrives, the blubber is sliced off, the skins roughly salted, and in this condition the material is retained for the few weeks until their voyage leads the “fishers” home again. Arrived at Dundee, the cargo is quickly landed, weighed, and the materials placed in the hands of the skinner. The fat is cut up by a variety of cutters driven by steam, and then steamed to facilitate the rendering of the oil. The greater part of the oil thus obtained is tasteless, inodorous, and pure as water. The remaining blubber, after the first oil is taken off, is placed in bags and pressed, and from these pressings most of the brown and inferior quality of oil is had. The former is by far the more valuable. Seal-oil has, of course, varied considerably in price during this century, in 1876–7 averaging £32 a ton, the inferior sort less in proportion. With regard to the skins, these, after being soaked, and the salt got rid of, pass through the usual tanning processes. Relative absence of under-fur gives value only to the leather. Roughly speaking, they fetch five to six shillings apiece.
THE BEARDED SEAL.[222]—About this animal there seems to be a certain amount of ambiguity, or want of agreement among naturalists, whether more than one species be not included under the Ph. barbata of Fabricius. This missionary refers to the “Ursuk,” the big, fat, or great Seal of the Greenlanders. The Russian naturalists Steller, Pallas, and Middendorf, speak of a Seal by different appellations, but most evidently this animal, as inhabiting the neighbourhood of Behring Strait and Kamstchatka. Schrenck and Temminck refer to it as being found, the former on the coast of Amoor land; the latter in Japan, where its skin is sold as an article of commerce. The Leporine Seal of Pennant may be regarded as still another synonym of the same creature. If such be the case, this great Bearded Seal has a geographical range from the west of Greenland to the Sea of Japan, an area somewhat corresponding to that of the Saddle-back, though less spread in the North Atlantic. Rink alludes to it as the “Thong Seal,” the Eskimo cutting the skin circularly into a long strip, which “allunak,” or hide rope, they use for harpoon lines. About 1,000 are captured annually on the Greenland coast. Dr. R. Brown regards it as the “Ground Seal” of the Spitzbergen sealers, and says that the blubber is most delicate in taste, and most highly prized as a culinary dainty. Unlike the other Seals, it has no “atluk,” but depends on broken places in the ice. It is generally found among loose ice and breaking-up floes. Its great size, occasionally ten feet long, and bulky body in proportion, is its important feature. It is of a tawny colour, darker above, and the young is supposed to be of a lighter hue.
THE GREY SEAL.[223]—Its range is a limited one compared with that of the last. It frequents the British coasts, especially Ireland and the Hebrides, and from the Scandinavian coast it stretches towards and round the southern shore of Greenland. It also is of enormous size. One old male, shot in 1869, at the Eagle Rock, Connemara, Mr. A. G. More states, weighed nearly 400 lbs., was eight feet long, and had a girth of body over five feet. Its colour is yellowish-grey, lighter beneath, with varied dark grey spots and blotches. Fabricius first described it, and the Swede Professor Nilsson ranked it as a separate genus, the distinguishing characters depending on the form of its skull and molar teeth, small brain-case, and large nasal orifice, the muzzle being deep and obliquely truncated. To Mr. Ball, of Dublin, we are indebted for a tolerably good account of its habits and other particulars, he having shown it to be the same as Donovan’s Orkney Seal, the so-called Ph. barbata. In bringing the matter before the British Association in 1836, Professor Nilsson recognised it as his H. griseus, the same animal described by Fabricius in 1790. On the British coasts it breeds in October and November, though Nilsson asserts that on the Swedish coasts it breeds in February, a contradiction hitherto not clearly explained. A male and female from Wales were exhibited in the Zoological Gardens in 1871, and Mr. Bartlett particularly noted that it was both greedy and savage as compared with the other Seals under his charge. This accords with Mr. Ball’s account, who found it insusceptible of domestication; this he attributed to its small brain relatively to the other Seals. At the mouth of a cave at Howth he was fortunate in harpooning one. Some state that they are solitary in their habits, others that they associate in pairs, and still others that they congregate in groups of ten or a dozen. At all events, they select such remote and unfrequented situations that it is no very easy matter to follow them. They are not so lively, watchful, or timid as the Common Seal. Those of the county Galway are said to utter most dismal howls in chorus. Their young they leave on the exposed barren rocks, and suckle them every tide for the space of a fortnight. When born, they are of a dull yellowish-white, in a few weeks becoming darker, and by degrees gaining their greyish coat. Under the name of Black Seal, probably this species, an animal (besides the Common Seal) occasionally frequents the Bay of St. Andrews and the Tay mouth, where it is very destructive to fish and nets.
THE MONK SEAL.[224]—Who has not heard or seen something of the “wonderful learned talking fish,” if only from placard or fanciful sketch hung outside the showman’s caravan, with the occasional attractive announcement that “the amphibious creature has the sense of hearing in its nostrils, and fins bearing the impression of five fingers?” A visit soon dispels the illusion, as the imploring look of a hungry but bright-eyed Seal in a tub of water greets the sight. These “talking fish” generally belong to this species, and have often been exhibited in Britain and on the Continent. A full-grown animal reaches between seven and eight feet long, and upwards. It is dark-brown mixed with grey above, and whitish below, and has short hair and small claws. It entirely differs from all the preceding in being confined to the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and the African coasts neighbouring Madeira and the Canaries. Buffon’s classic description of the White-bellied Seal refers to this species, and Pennant names it the Pied Seal. Its geographical limits are as above stated, unless it be the same as a Seal from Jamaica, which Gray terms M. tropicalis, in which case it would traverse the Atlantic, a fact that is more than doubtful. Their mild disposition and teachable nature have led to their frequent exhibition. They go through many tricks, utter sounds construed into speech, present the fore-paw to “shake hands,” kiss the visitor when desired, obey other trifling commands, and allow themselves to be freely handled. Little is known as to its times of breeding and rearing of young, though its habits in a state of nature are believed to be very similar to those of the Seal tribe generally.
CRESTED SEAL.
THE CRESTED, OR BLADDER-NOSE SEAL.[225]—The geographical range of this animal agrees best with that of the Common Seal, that is, it sweeps along the North American coast from Florida right up into Baffin’s Bay, thence to the south coasts of Greenland, across the North Atlantic, skirting Britain and Scandinavia, to Spitzbergen. Named from the remarkable prominence of the front upper-part of the head, this is one of the largest and most powerful of the Northern Seals. Certainly it is the fiercest and most dangerous, as the Eskimo know to their cost in attacking it from their kayaks. It does not hesitate to return an assault, and the crest, it is said, affords some protection from wounds inflicted by the club. These brutes fight ferociously among themselves, and the roaring during such ice-battles, in the still Arctic regions, is said to be audible four miles off. The so-called crest, hood, or bladder, is in reality nothing of the sort, but only a peculiar enlargement of the nasal passages, more particularly developed in the old animals of both sexes. The configuration of the head of this creature is hemispherical, and proportionally broad and short. The bony parts of the snout, and the cartilaginous septum of the nose and nostrils generally, are so formed as to allow great dilatation of these parts. That is to say, the two passages of the nostrils are, in the full-grown animal, exceedingly capacious fleshy tunnels. From youth onwards, this region acquires prominence, and, partly through habit and growth of the structures in later life, the animal when roused inflates, by compression of the muscles of upper-lip and nose, the cavities in question, so much so as to produce the expansion on the forehead which has given rise to its specific soubriquet. All engravings, even our own, represent this structure as reaching farther back on the head than the absolute anatomical conformation of the parts warrants, but in the live animal the skin of the head rearwards to some extent swells in unison with the puffed nostril, and hence to a certain degree simulates a hood or crest. Some sealers regard the so-called bladder as an air reservoir for buoyancy, an idea totally at variance with its true nature. The teeth of this genus are peculiar, the incisors being fewer in number. The formula is—Incisors, 2–2 1–1; canines, 1–1 1–1; premolars, 4–4 4–4; molars, 1–1 1–1 = 30. From eight to twelve feet in length has been given as the limits of size it obtains. The young are pure white; when a year old they become greyish, and the hue deepens, becoming deep chestnut and black above, though the lighter shade is retained on the under parts; chiefly on the back are black spots and rings of white. The muzzle is hairy, and the hair on the rest of the body long, with thick soft under-wool. It visits Greenland in May and June, leaves in July, and again returns in August and September. Fabricius states that they are polygamous. This animal is one which the sealers hunt, it frequenting the outside of the ice-packs. Rink estimates the average annual catch in Greenland at 3,000. An individual will yield 120 lbs. of blubber, and as much as 200 lbs. of flesh.