The True Seals 281
thirty English miles of country. The ground was covered with snow, and this
doubtless facilitated the movements of the animal.
On the larger rocks frequented by the Grey Seal a state of polygamy prevails.
The big males drive all the younger ones away and take to themselves as many
as four or five females apiece. During the day they swim about together, and
it is doubtful if the males eat much during the actual breeding season. At
night they all lie up together on the rocks and constant growling and quarrelling
goes on till morning breaks. I f the day is wet or cold they once more take to
the sea. Copulation takes place in the water and is performed after the manner
of other four-footed animals. No mutual fidelity exists, although the males are
exceedingly jealous; fierce fights frequently take place in which some of the
combatants are fearfully bitten and torn about the head and neck, and the
wounds inflicted are as bad as could be made by a tiger. The first time I ever
saw a lot of big males together—it was on Little Haskeir— I witnessed a bit of
a scrimmage which I shall describe later; as also the wounds inflicted on a young
black male which I shot on Big Haskeir. After the rutting season there is
hardly a big male skin that is not considerably lacerated ; and the Grey Seals will
not lie up and settle down comfortably together, as I have seen Common Seals
do almost immediately after fighting.
In Scotland, in the annual Seal-hunts, when numbers were done to death, both
old and young were always killed with a short sealing club of heavy wood about
two feet long. Guns were rarely used, though they are in Norway. The man who
could run smartly over the slippery rocks and dispatch the big male with a couple
of blows of his club was always the local hero of the village. One old Hogary
man told me that a particularly large male, which he was anxious to kill, came
rushing down the steep pass he was guarding on the east side of Haskeir and,
stopping when it reached him, seized his club in its teeth before he could strike.
It dragged him head over heels into the sea, from which he was rescued only after
a severe ducking.
Edmondston quaintly quotes some stirring episodes of Seal-hunting. ‘ In the
dusk of the evening, a man thus engaged in an attack upon a few females who
were lying at some little distance from the water, in making a blow at one of
them slipped his foot and fell ; the Seal, anxious to get to the sea, sledged
herself over him; four or five others rapidly followed in her wake over the body
of the prostrate Homo Sapiens, before he, oppressed by these nightmares, and
petrified with terror, could elevate his frons divina. But his fears were groundv
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