OCR Text |
Show 1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 421 they select ice of a strong consistence for the safety of their young when in that helpless condition in which they are unable to take to the water. Again, they often take the ice where it stretches out to sea in the form of a long, broad promontory, with apparently this end in view, that their young may easily get to sea when able to do so ; this is the great clue which guides the sealer in the choice of the ice where he may find his prey. This was very well exhibited in 1859. Dr. Wallace tells m e that there was very little ice that year, and the island of Jan Mayen was altogether free from it; indeed the nearest ice lay away nearly 70 miles or more to the north-west of it. The ** Victor,' the ** Intrepid,' and a fleet of other ships met with indications of Seals in 72° N . lat., about eighty miles in a northwesterly direction from Jan Mayen, in the early part of the month of April; they had sailed in an easterly direction through a very loose pack of very heavy ice. The prospects were so good that Capt. Martin, sen., of the 'Intrepid,' perhaps the most successful sealer who ever sailed in the Greenland sea, and Capt. Anderson, of the ' Victor' (my old fellow voyageur both in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans), were congratulating each other on the almost certain prospect of filling their ships (for, indeed, the old Seals had taken the ice and some had already brought forth their young), when suddenly there was a change of wind to the eastward, and before many hours it blew a hard gale from that direction. The results were that the ice was driven together into a firm pack and frozen into solid floes, and the ' Victor' and many of the best ships of the fleet got ice-bound. The Seals shifted their position towards the edge of the ice to be nearer the sea, and for seven weeks the • Victor' was beset among ice and drifted southwards as far as N. lat. 67° 15', having described a course of nearly 400 miles. Though I have stated the parallel of 72° N. lat. as being the peculiar whereabouts of the Seals in March, yet they have often been found at a considerable distance from it as well from Jan Mayen. Thus in 1859 they were found in considerable numbers not far from Iceland, the most northerly point of which is in N. lat. 66° 44'; this leads me to remark that the Seals are often divided into several bodies or flocks, and may be at a considerable distance from each other, although it is most common to find these smaller flocks on the skirts or at no great distance from the main body. After the young have begun to take the water in the Spitzbergen sea, they gradually direct their course to the outside streams, where they are often taken in considerable numbers on warm sunny days. When able to provide for themselves, the females gradually leave them and join the males in the north, where they are hunted by the sealers in the months of M a y and June; and it is especially during the latter month that the females are seen to have joined the males ; for at the "old-sealing" (as this is called) in May, it has often been remarked that few or no males are seen in company with the females. Later in the year, in July, there are seen, between the parallels of 76° and 77° N., these flocks of Seals, termed by Scoresby " Seals' weddings ;" PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1868, No. XXVIII. |