Owing to my having accidentally made the acquaintance of a young grey seal, as mentioned above, in North Cornwall, I feel a special interest in the legislative protection of this kind. I was at Boscastle at the end of August, and was delighted to see there on the morning after my arrival three or four of the common seal swimming in the little rock-bound harbour. I was told by native authorities that there was a cave in the rocks at the side of Pentargon Cove, a couple of miles distant (formerly inaccessible from the cliffs), where these seals breed, and that it had been the custom of some of the young men of the district to go round there in a boat when wind and tide served in the early spring and "raid" the cave. They could get in at low tide, and, armed with heavy cudgels, they would attack the seals which were congregated in the cavern to the number of thirty or forty. A single well-delivered blow on the nose was sufficient, I was assured, to kill a full-grown seal, and if fortunate the raiders might secure ten or a dozen seals, which were then sold for their skins and oil to Bristol dealers. The enterprise was dangerous on account of the rising tide and the struggles of the seals and their assailants among the slippery rocks and deep pools in the darkness of the cave. Cruel and savage as the adventure was, it yet had its justification on a commercial basis--similar to that claimed for other "fisheries" of the great beasts of the sea hunted by man for their oil and skins. The seals of this cave were undoubtedly the small common seal--the Phoca vitulina--and I gathered that little had been heard of late years of successful expeditions to these rocks. I was, however, told that a path had been cut and ropes fastened to iron stanchions in the face of the rocky cliffs of Pentargon Cove just before my visit to Boscastle, which rendered it now comparatively easy to descend the 150 feet of rock from the hill overlooking it and reach the shore of the curiously isolated and enclosed cove.