the males are constantly fighting, for hardly one is without abundant scars at
this period, it is rarely possible to witness a conflict. The union of the sexes
takes place early in September, and the period of gestation is nine months, for
the female gives birth to her single young one about the first week in June.
It is generally thought that the young of the Common Seal are born with
a white woolly covering which may or may not be shed within a few hours or
days after birth, and that the young then follow the mother to the sea. This
error is quoted in nearly every work on the subject, but many excellent observers,
such as Mr. L. Lloyd (in his ‘ Game Birds and Wild Fowl of Norway and Sweden ’),
believe that the cub casts its woolly coat while still in the womb of the mother,
and is born wearing the second pelage. This was also the opinion formed by the
Seal-hunter of Loch Maddy, who had slain hundreds of Seals. In 1899 he showed
me the tiny skin of a baby Seal in the second coat o f hair, and also some balls of
white woolly hair which he positively asserted he had taken from the dead body
of the mother which he had shot at the beginning of June in that year. Dr.
Bdmondston too, than whom there was no more careful observer of the habits of
our Seals, also held a similar opinion. ‘ The foetal covering of hair is of a silvery
white and of a silken fineness. This is cast in the uterus some time before birth,
and thrown off with the secundines—a singular fact, directly contrasted with what
occurs in the young of the Great Seal.’ It is quite certain that young Seals born
on sandbanks must take to the water on the day they are born, as soon as the
tide flows, and to do so in their white coat seems more than strange, since this
is not the usual case with other Seals which have a white first coat. I have met
with many reliable persons who have seen young Seals apparently just born but
in full second pelage, but never with one who has seen a young Common Seal in
the white coat lying up ashore. This too is my own experience, and I have seen
many baby Seals recently born.
Captain Macdonald of Waternish, who hunted Seals for many years in the
western isles, is reported to have said1 that the ‘ young are born white, with curly
hair, like the young of Pagomys fcetidus, but within three days of their birth begin
to take dark colours on the mouth and tips of the flippers.’ 2 Mr. Allen also states,
on the authority of Mr. Kumlien, that the Esquimaux affirm that ‘ the young remain
in the white coat but three or four days, differing greatly in this respect
1 Allen’s Pinnipeds o f North America.
* Mr, Robert Brown in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, p. 413. St. John also in his Wild Sports o f the Highlands, p. 256, says
the young are born cream-coloured.