The _Phoca vitulina_, by the English termed _seal_, and by the French, _phoque_, is the most common species of those animals in the north, and is dispersed with some variety throughout the rest of the ocean. Its head is large and flat; the teeth strong, and so sharp that I have seen it bite in two the handspikes with which the men were attempting to kill it; the tongue is forked; and it is well furnished with whiskers around the mouth; has almost no external appearance of ears, but merely an aperture to convey the sound to the _sensorium_; the eyes are small, and have a haggard appearance; the neck thickens as it approaches the shoulder, the thickest part of the animal; from whence the body gradually tapers in a cylindrical form, to the extremity, where the hind legs are placed, between which is a very short tail; the fore paws consist of five fingers, joined together by a membrane, and furnished with very strong cylindrical nails; the hind paws are formed in the same way, except that the fingers are longer than in the fore paws, and that the shortest of them are in the middle, and the longest on the outside of the paw. The length of an ordinary full grown seal is about seven or eight feet; and its thickness at the shoulder four or five. It is covered with short coarse thick hair, which varies in its colour with the different ages of the animal. The flesh of the seal is of a reddish colour, and is, by the Greenlanders, accounted excellent food. Our sailors esteemed the entrails of a young one which they dressed, as equal to those of a hog. A seal will yield about twelve or fourteen gallons of good oil; their skins are very valuable, serving for covers to trunks, vests, &c. and are now used to a very considerable extent in the manufacture of shoes. The Greenlanders, who depend almost entirely for subsistence on this animal, make their boots, and other articles of dress, as well as the inside of their huts, of its skin. The seal is a gregarious and polygamous animal. It is never met with at a great distance from land, but frequents the bays and seas adjacent to the shore. It feeds promiscuously on most sorts of small fish, but chiefly on the spawn of the salmon. Fabricius differs from both Buffon and Pennant in asserting, that the seal brings forth but one at a time, while they maintain that it brings forth two.[16] At the time of parturition, it comes on shore, and suckles its young there for about six weeks before it takes them to the water, where it instructs them in swimming. Though naturally timid, the female defends her young with great boldness and spirit; on other occasions they generally place their safety in flight; but I have sometimes seen them throw back stones and pieces of ice on the sailors who pursued them. [16] Perhaps Pliny has hit the truth, “_Parit nunquam geminis plures_.” _Nat. Hist._ lib. 9. § 13.