This implement he thrusts into the ice, and the knob, which remains above the surface, informs him by its motion whether the animal is still engaged in making his hole; if it does not move, the attempt is given up in that place, and the hunter betakes himself elsewhere. When he supposes the hole to be nearly completed, he stealthily raises his spear, and as soon as he can hear the blowing of the seal, and knows therefore that the ice-crust is very thin, he drives it into the unsuspecting animal with all his might; and then hacks away with his sharp-edged knife, or _panna_, the intervening ice, so as to repeat his blows, and secure his victim. The _neituk_, or Phoca hispida, being the smallest seal, is held while struggling, either by the hand, or by a line one end of which is twisted round a spear driven into the ice. In the case of the bearded seal, or _oguka_, the line is coiled round the hunter’s leg or arm; for a walrus, round his body, the feet being at the same time firmly planted against a hummock of ice, so as to increase the capability of resistance. A boy of fifteen can kill a _neituk_, but the larger animals can be mastered only by a robust and experienced adult. We come now to speak of the Whale, which, in size, is the sovereign of the Arctic seas, and the grandest type of marine life. Whales (_Cetacea_) are, as most persons now-a-days know, an order of aquatic mammals, distinguished by their fin-like anterior extremities, and by the peculiarity that the place of the posterior extremities is supplied by a large horizontal caudal fin, or tail; while the cervical bones are so compressed that the animal, externally at least, seems to have no neck. The general form of the whale, notwithstanding its position among the Mammalia, is similar to that of the fishes, and the horizontal elongation of the body, the smooth and rounded surface, the gradual attenuation of the extremities of the trunk, and the magnitude of the fins and tail, are specially adapted to easy and swift motion in the water. The arrangement of the bones composing the anterior limb is very curious. The whole of the fin consists of exactly the same parts as those which we find in the human hand and arm; but they are so concealed beneath the thick cutaneous or integumentary envelope, that not a trace of bone is visible. In this respect an intermediate organization is shown by the fore limbs of the seal.