another species is a long step, and I have never yet read evidence to convince me it has been made.
Speaking further of the habits of the common seal, Dr. Edmondstone says: "Their time of ascending the rocks is when the tide begins to fall—the water must be smooth and the wind off shore. The favourite seasons are late in spring and early autumn." With so short an experience, perhaps, I should be chary of forming an opinion at variance with that of one who was "for more than twenty years engaged in hunting these animals." But my affirmative evidence is good, as far as it goes, and what a few individuals do for a few days—or even what one does once—is in all probability done habitually by every member of the species. There were two kinds of rocks on which my seals lay, viz. those which were exposed only when the tide was more or less out, and those which were always exposed. They came to the first whilst they were still under water, and established themselves upon them as soon as it was possible to do so, and remained there, as a rule, until they were floated off by the returning tide. The second kind, as represented by one great slanting slab, which was the favourite resort, they ascended and left at all times of the day, without any regard whatever to the state of the tide, the obvious reason being that the tide did not here affect their power of doing so. The rock which one seal made such persistent, though unsuccessful, efforts to get up on to, could only by possibility be scaled when the tide was at the full, and
