ABSTRACT
THE procedure by which seals are hunted may be grasped quite easily from the illustration in the above woodcut. 1 The hunter, camouflaged with a black skin and carrying a long iron-barbed spear, crouches out on the ice and imitates the bark of a seal. It is not long before a male approaches under the impression that he will now take another mate, after putting to death his own female; 2 for, as Albertus remarks, there is no crueller beast for murdering wives, so that it moves from one female to the next till eventually one of them kills it in self-defence. 3 It now finds a harpoon rather than a partner, a death-dealing snare instead of sexual satisfaction. The spike that has been launched on the spear remains lodged in the animal’s body and is only drawn back by a rope when the seal is exhausted from loss of blood. 4
