These remarks of mine, it should be borne in mind, apply directly to the _Phoca vitulina_, and I presume indirectly with equal force to all the rest of its more important generic kindred, be they as large as the big maklok, _Erignathus barbata_, or less. This hair-seal is found around these islands at all seasons of the year, but in very small numbers. I have never seen more than twenty-five or thirty at any one time, and I am told that its occidental distribution, although everywhere found, above and below, from the arctic to the tropics, and especially general over the North Pacific coast, nowhere exhibits any great number at any one place; but we know that it and its immediate kindred form a vast majority of the multitudinous seal-life peculiar to our North Atlantic shores, ice-floes, and contiguous waters. The scarcity of this species, and of all its generic allies, in the waters of the Pacific, is notable as compared with those of the circumpolar Atlantic, where these hair-seals are the seals of commerce: they are found in such immense numbers between Greenland and Labrador, and thence to the eastward at certain seasons of every year, that employment is given to a fleet of about sixty sailing and steam vessels, which annually goes forth from St. John, Newfoundland, and elsewhere, fitted for seal-fishing: taking in all this cruising over three hundred thousand of these animals each season. The principal object of value, however, is the oil rendered from them: the skins have a very small commercial importance. The fur-seal, _Callorhinus ursinus_, which repairs to these islands to breed and to shed its hair and fur, in numbers that seem almost fabulous, is the highest organized of all the _Pinnipedia_, and, indeed, for that matter, when land and water are weighed in the account together, there is no other animal known to man which may be truly classed as its superior, from a purely physical point of view. Certainly there are few, if any, creatures in the animal kingdom that can be said to exhibit a higher order of instinct, approaching even our intelligence. [Illustration: GROUP OF FUR SEALS Young Females 2 years Old Male 18 years Young Male 6 years Mother Seal and Pup nursing Old Male “Roaring” Young Males 2 years