The remarks we have been making apply more particularly to the common seal (_Phoca vitulina_), or small Spitzbergen seal, which measures from four to five feet in length. The Greenland or harp seal (_Phoca Grœnlandica_), to which we have already alluded, is larger and fatter, and is distinguished by the changes of colour it undergoes before it reaches maturity. We have also spoken of the bearded seal (_Phoca barbata_), which sometimes attains a length of ten feet, and is known, not only by its size, but its thick and strong moustaches. The hooded seal (_Stemmatopus cristatus_) is distinguished by the globular and expansible sac situated on the summit of the head of the males. This species grows to the length of seven or eight feet, and inhabits the waters of Newfoundland and Greenland. The value of the seal to the Eskimo tribes will best be understood from a description of the uses to which various parts of the animal are applied in an Eskimo hut. [Illustration: THE HOODED SEAL.] We will suppose this hut to measure about five or five and a half feet in height, and about ten feet in diameter. The walls are made of stones, moss, and the bones of seals, narwhals, whales, and other ocean-creatures. They are not arched, but recede inward gradually from the foundation, and are capped by long oblong slabs of slate-stone extending from side to side. We enter: the flooring consists of thin flat stones. At the back part of the hut the floor rises about a foot, and this _breck_, as the elevation is called, serves both as couch and seat, being covered with a thick layer of dried moss and grass, under seal-skins, dog-skins, and bear-skins. Similar elevations are placed at the corners in front; under one of which will lie, perhaps, a litter of pups, with their mother, and under the other a portion of seal’s meat. In the square front of the hut, above the passage-way, a window is inserted; the light being admitted through a square sheet of strips of dried intestines, sewed together. The entrance is in the floor, close to the front wall, and is covered with a piece of seal-skin. Seal-skins are hung about the walls to dry. At the edge of the _breck_, on either side, sits a woman, each busily engaged in attending to a smoky lamp, fed with seal’s oil. These lamps are made of soapstone, and in shape resemble a clam-shell, being about eight inches in diameter. The cavity is filled with oil obtained from seal’s blubber; and on the straight edge the flame burns quite vividly, the wick which furnishes it being made of moss. The business of the women is apparently to prevent the lamps from smoking, and to keep them supplied with blubber, large pieces of which are placed in the cavity, the heat drawing out the oil. About three inches above this flame hangs, suspended from the ceiling, an oblong square pot made of the same material as the lamp, in which a joint of seal is simmering slowly. Above this hangs a rack, made of bare rib-bones, bound together