108 BRITISH AMERICA.

varieties, as they all come down on the ice frOm the hyperborean regions in immense herds. They leave the polar seas with the ice, on which they appear to bring forth their young. On the ice dissolving, they return again to the north. Five kinds are named in the Greenland seas, and these come down to the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, and to the Gulf of St Lawrence : the harp seal (phoca Groenlandica), the hooded seal (phoca leonina), and three other va- rieties, the square flipper, the blue sea], and the jar seal.

Herds of these, many leagues in extent on the ice, seem to have no means of subsistence. Caplin, and other substances, are, it is true, occasionally found in their stomachs; but, from the impossibility of their being able often for a week to get off the ice into the Water, it is wonderful that both old and young are exceedingly fat. The flesh is very unpalatable. Many of these seals are beautifully speckled black and white, others grey, and some blue. As the blubber and skins of seals form important articles of com- merce, an account of the fitting out vessels for, and the enterprising business of, hunting these animals, will be given in another part of this work.

Of the birds which are peculiar to, or that frequent or breed in, America, probably not half the different species have yet been classed, or are even distinctly known by naturalists.

The industry of Pennant, Wilson, and some other men of observation and research, has added valu- able stores to American ornithology ; yet, notwith-