On the east coast of North America seal catching is still carried on with considerable success. Newfoundland intercepts many of the immense fields and islands of ice which in the spring move south from the Arctic Sea. The interior parts, with the openings or lakes interspersed, remain serene and unbroken, and form the transitory abodes of myriads of seals. In the month of March upwards of three hundred small vessels, fitted out for the seal fishery, are extricated from the icy harbours on the east coast of Newfoundland; the fields are now all in motion, and the vessels plunge directly into the edges of such as appear to have seals on them; the crews, armed with firelocks and heavy bludgeons, there _land_, and in the course of a few weeks destroy nearly 300,000 of these animals. The Greenland winter, it would appear, is too severe for these luckless wanderers, and when it sets in, they accompany the field-ice, and remain on it until it is scattered and dissolved. Old and young being then deserted in the ocean, nature points out to them the course to their favourite icy haunts, and thither their herds hurry over the deep to pass an arctic summer. Winter returns, and with it commences again their annual migration from latitude to latitude. The Scotch ports, particularly Aberdeen, fit out ships for the spring seal-catching on the American coast, and are generally successful in their undertakings. [Illustration: Greenland Seal.] [Illustration: Seal.] According to the different numbers and forms of their canine teeth and grinders, and to the deficiency or presence of an _outward_ ear, the seal tribe is divided into many families, genera, and species, among which I shall select a few of the most remarkable for further notice. The Common Seal or Sea-calf, (_Calocephalus vitulinus_), which owes the latter name to the unharmonious accents of its voice, attains a length of from five to six feet. It has a large round head, small short neck, and several strong bristles on each side of its mouth, large eyes, no external ears, and a forked tongue. It has six fore teeth in the upper jaw, four in the lower, a strong pointed canine tooth on each side in both jaws, and a goodly row of sharp and jagged grinders. Woe to the poor herring whose evil star leads him between these engines of destruction--he is irrevocably lost! Different species of common seals inhabit the Northern seas, from Greenland and Spitzbergen to the mouth of the Scheldt, and from the White Sea to the eastern coast of America. Others are found in the Antarctic seas. An excellent swimmer, the seal dives like a shot, and rises at fifty yards' distance, often remaining full a quarter of an hour under the water--three times longer than the most strong-breasted and expert pearl fisher. Yet he is seldom seen more than thirty miles from land, where he sleeps and reposes, choosing rocks surrounded by the sea or the less accessible cliffs, left dry by the ebb of the tide, so that,