I think, indeed, it is the larger animal of the two. I can make these comparisons, for both are here together now, and they continue for hour after hour to haunt the pool; but whilst he of the bottle-nose rises always at his long intervals and soon goes down, the knight of the leopard comes up at as short, or even shorter ones than the common seal does, and sometimes stays for a longer time, as witness these twelve successive appearances, with their corresponding disappearances, which I timed, partly to know, and partly to feel scientific: from 11.44 to 11.48; from 11.50¼ to 11.53¾; from 11.55 to 12; from 12.1¼ to 12.5½; from 12.7¾ to 12.11; from 12.14 to 12.17¾; from 12.20 to 12.24; from 12.25¾ to 12.30¼; from 12.32 to 12.37½; from 12.44 to 12.49; from 12.50¾ to 12.55.
Also, though he often pegtops it, he has never yet pointed his nose straight up into the sky, which my bottle-nosed seal invariably does. Generally he soon adopts the horizontal attitude, and continues in it for the rest of the time he is up. When he goes down, he rolls round, as well as over—by which I mean both like a porpoise and like a barrel—and then his spotted, or rather blotched, belly makes a splendid mosaic under the water, for it is not only itself, which were enough of beauty, but the most lovely glaucous green is flung upon it, through which, all glorified, the pattern appears. A magnificent sight! "The very phenix!" Poor Bottle-nose is quite eclipsed.
This great beauty of the skin—which, strange to
