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Show 1904.] GREY SEAL AT VARIOUS STAGES OF GROWTH. 377 The type of dark female had the usual demarcation of grey upper parts and whitish under parts, but the whole is so suffused with ashy grey and black spots and blotches that the whole pelage appears to be blackish grey. The muzzle is dark, and the crown, as usual, pale grey. If there is one external characteristic which marks out the Grey Seal for superficial identification, it is the pale-grey crown of the head. This feature is present in nearly every example of both male and female of whatever type, and, even when they were swimming in the sea at a distance of half a mile, I have been able with certainty to distinguish this Seal from the Common Seal, the head of which always looks black, bullety, and glistening. In adults the mystacial bristles are abundant, very stiff, and curiously crenulated, which gives to certain old males a rather " walrusy " look. The snout is unusually elongated, especially in the old male, whilst the muzzle is very broad and fleshy, with the nose aquiline. These characteristics are more subdued in the female, and her eyes have a more benevolent expression. The eyes of the old male are somewhat sunk, and, when angry, he has, like the big carnivora, a most ferocious expression. In the fore feet the two first toes are of equal length and have large nails, whilst the hind feet are deeply emarginated, the outer toes forming long fingers and only possessing small nails. In very old males these nails become almost completely worn away, and the animals do not seem capable of renewing them. The length of adult males varies from 7g to 10 feet. From the measurements taken by myself of 27 adult males, I find 8 feet to 8 feet 6 inches to be the common length. 9 feet 6 inches is that of the largest animal I have handled ; but I have little doubt that monsters of 10 feet and even over are sometimes to be found, and I think that I once shot and lost one as large as this. The statement that males of 12 and 13 feet have been captured must be accepted with reservation, and it must be recollected that the sportsman generally measures his seal from the nose to the end of the hind flippers, and not from the nose to the end of the tail, as he should do. The adult males vary a good deal in weight, as some of them are long, lanky-looking creatures, and others very short for their size and thickset. A big male shot by Sir Reginald Cathcart on South Uist weighed 50 stone, and in the ' Vertebrate Fauna of Argyll and and the Inner Hebrides,' Harvie-Brown and Buckley state:- " Mr. Henry Evans records the weight of one killed at 48 stones, and he has known them to reach 9 feet in length. W e ourselves, we believe, have seen specimens exceeding this size in the Outer Hebrides. One shot by Mr. M'Neill, Jun., of Canna, as he assured us, weighed 45 stones 5 lbs., and was the largest ever seen or recorded there (1881)." Dr. Edmonston, who had a long experience of these Seals in Shetland, gives the weight as 639 pounds. The largest male he-examined was " 8 feet from the muzzle to end of tail; girth round |
