The TRUE SEALS, with their greatly modified forms, heads set almost on to their shoulders, with no neck visible, have well-developed claws on all the toes, and in the typical species have double-rooted and small cheek-teeth. The number of the incisors is variable. The GREY SEAL of the North Atlantic is a large species which visits the North British coasts and the Hebrides. One old male shot off the coast of Connemara weighed nearly 400 lbs., and was 8 feet long. It is found off Scandinavia and eastwards to the coast of Greenland, and breeds off our coasts in October and November. This is the large seal occasionally shot up Scotch lochs. Its colour is yellowish grey, varied with blots and patches of dirty black and brown.
This seal is smaller than the preceding. It breeds on parts of the Welsh and Cornish coasts, and is found on both sides of the Atlantic and in the North Pacific. It assembles in small herds, and frequents lochs, estuaries, and river-mouths. In the summer it is fond of following flounders and sea-trout up rivers. A few years ago one came up the Thames and was shot at Richmond. The young are born in June, and are greyish white. The adults are variously mottled with grey, brown, and black. The fondness of seals for music is proverbial. Macgillivray, the Scotch naturalist, said that in the Hebrides he could bring half a score of them within forty yards of him by a few notes on his flute, when they would swim about with their heads above water like so many black dogs. A seal was captured by the servants of a landowner near Clew Bay, on the west coast of Ireland, and kept tame for four years. It became so attached to the house that, after being carried out to sea three times, it returned on each occasion. The cruel wretches who owned it then blinded it, out of curiosity to see whether it could find its way back sightless. The poor animal did so after eight days.
The common seal is still fairly numerous on the rocky western coasts of the British Islands, though a few old seals, unable to forget their early habits, appear now and then in Morecambe Bay and in the Solway. It is not uncommon off the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland. It also frequents a sandbank in the Dornoch Firth, though it has been much persecuted there. The common seal is gregarious, while the grey seal usually lives only in pairs, or at most in small companies. Two or three dozen like to lie closely packed on shore with all their heads turning seawards. The white hair of the young seals--which, as already said, are born in June--is shed in a day or two, when the young take to the water. With regard to their reputed musical proclivities, some experiments made at the Zoological Gardens did not bear out this belief; but there is much evidence that in a state of nature they will approach and listen to music. The common seal has a large brain-capacity, and is a very intelligent creature. The upper parts of this seal are yellowish grey, spotted with black and brown, the under parts being silver-grey.