portly bottle-nose—were as under, viz., from 12.6 to 12.15; from 12.16½ to 12.26; from 12.27 to 12.36½; from 12.37½ to 12.48; from 4.26 to 4.39; from 4.40 to 4.54½; from 4.55½ to 5.7¾; from 5.9½ to 5.23; from 5.24½ to 5.37½; from 5.38½ to 5.51; from 5.52½ to 6.4¼; from 6.5½ to 6.18¾. Thus only three out of a dozen of his subaqueous excursions was for less than ten minutes, the shortest one being for nine minutes and the longest for fourteen minutes and a half. His stays above water were of even more uniform duration, varying between a minute and a minute and a half, except in one instance where he stayed a minute and three quarters. An animal of regular habits, by my fay! No doubt the great bottle-nose can stay down longer on occasions if he wishes it, but as this is his usual period, it must, I suppose, be what he finds most comfortable; and the same should apply to every other kind of seal. The nostrils of this larger one have the appearance of being more highly developed than in the common species, and this may have something to do with his more prolonged submersions, if I may take what I have seen in these two individuals as typical of their respective communities.
Returning now to the common seal, what distinguished him this afternoon from the bottle-nosed one was that, after he had come up and gone down again several times, he at last remained floating for half an hour or more in this perpendicular fashion, his head for the most part straight up in the air, whilst at
