s a human soul, or a fallen angel in
metempsychosis, and that to him who is remarkable for hostility to the
phocal race some fatal retribution will ensue. I can easily conceive the
feeling of awe with which a fisherman would be impressed when, in the
sombre magnificence of some rocky solitude, a great seal suddenly
presented himself, for an interview of this kind once occurred to
myself.

"I was lying one calm summer day on a rock a little elevated above the
water, watching the approach of seals, in a small creek formed by
frowning precipices several hundred feet high, near the north point of
the Shetland Islands.

"I had patiently waited for two hours, and the scene and the sunshine
had thrown me into a kind of reverie, when my companion, who was more
awake, arrested my attention. A full-sized female haff-fish was swimming
slowly past, within eight yards of my feet, her head askance, and her
eyes fixed upon me; the gun, charged with two balls, was immediately
pointed. I followed her with the aim for some distance, when she dived
without my firing.

"I resolved that this omission should not recur, if she afforded me
another opportunity of a shot, which I hardly hoped for, but which
actually in a few moments took place. Still I did not fire, until, when
at a considerable distance, she was on the eve of diving, and she eluded
the shot by springing to a side. Here was really a species of
fascination. The wild scene, the near presence and commanding aspect of
the splendid animal before me, produced a spellbound impression which,
in my sporting experience, I never felt before.

"On reflection, I was delighted that she escaped.

"The younger seals are the more easy to tame, but the more difficult to
rear; under a month old they must be fed, and, especially the _barbata_,
almost entirely on milk, and that of the cow seems hardly to agree with
them.

"Perhaps their being suckled by a cow fed chiefly on fish, the giving
them occasionally a little salt water, and then by degrees inducing them
to eat fish, might be the best mode until they attained the age of being
sustained on fish alone. In the _barbata_, to insure rapid taming, it
appears to be necessary to capture them before the period of casting the
foetal hair, analogous to what I have observed in the case of the
young of water-birds before getting up their first feathers, and when
they are entirely covered with the egg down.

"These changes seem connected with a g