Seals delight to lie upon the ice, or on the shore, exposed to the sun[17]; they there sleep very profoundly, and fall an easy prey to the sailors, who dispatch them by a blow on the nose. [17] _Sternunt se somno diversæ in littore Phocæ._ Georg. lib. 4. Their voice has been not unaptly compared by Buffon to the barking of a hoarse dog; when attacked, they make a more doleful kind of noise. Pliny expressly states this animal to be of a docile and tractable nature, and in this he is supported by the more enlarged experience of modern times. The seal described by Dr. Parsons[18] was taught to come out of his tub, and return to the water at the command of its keeper, to stretch out its neck to kiss him, and to perform several other motions. [18] Pennant’s _Quadrupeds_, vol. ii. p. 272. Seals have a very delicate sense of hearing, and are very much delighted with music. The Captain’s son, who was a good performer on the violin, never failed to have a numerous auditory, when we were in the seas frequented by those animals; and I have seen them follow the ship for miles when any person was playing on deck. This fact was observed by the ancient poets[19], and is thus alluded to by Sir Walter Scott, in one of his poems: “Rude Heiskar’s seals, through surges dark, Will long pursue the minstrel’s bark.” [19] _Apol. Rhod._ lib. 1. _Val. Flac._ lib. 5: lin. 440. _Gaudebant armine Phocæ._ These animals, in swimming, _constantly keep the head_, and often the whole body, as far as the shoulder, above the surface of the water. The first I saw was at a considerable distance, and might easily have been mistaken for a man, though it was much liker a dog. Buffon has already remarked, that this animal had given a foundation to the poetic fiction of the Nereids in antiquity; and perhaps we may add, to the no less fictitious mermaids of modern times. The Arctic walrus, or _Trichechus rosmarus_ of Linnæus, the other great variety of the Phocæ, frequents the bays and shores of Spitzbergen in vast numbers, though they are not now found in such quantities as when the Europeans first navigated these seas. The walrus is considerably larger than the seal, being sometimes found eighteen feet long, and twelve round, where thickest[20]. Their characteristic difference, however, consists in the walrus having two very large tusks, or horns, like the elephant’s, projecting from his upper jaw. These are sometimes found of an extraordinary size, from two to three feet in length, and weighing twenty pounds. The tusks of the Spitzbergen walrus seldom attain this size, because there the animal is generally killed before attaining its full growth. It is only on the northern coast of Asiatic Russia, or where they are not molested by hunters, that such tusks are found. [20] The largest we caught was only thirteen feet long and seven round.