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298 remained all the while he was up—which was never more than a minute—and then sank without altering it, differing in this last respect from the two larger seals, which always went down with a porpoise-like roll. His eyes were shut all the while, even when he went down, but still I supposed that, once beneath the surface, he was accustomed to swim away and enter upon some active employment "under the glassy, cool, translucent wave": the line, indeed—which, by the way, with its exquisite context, is not to be found in that overpraised pert piece of ex cathedra dictation. The Golden Treasury—for the gold non olet, but out on its many omissions and at least one vile, prudish mutilation!—hardly suits such a pot-boil as this haven now is; but it is always untroubled in the deeps. But I was deceived in this supposition, for once he came sufficiently near to the great bulk of rock where I was lying for me to see him for some time before he rose; and, to my surprise, I saw that he was floating in just the same attitude, and just as quiescently. As he came up his eyes were fast closed, so that I think he must have been dozing, or sleeping, like this, under the water, all the while, yet rising—perhaps automatically—at the requisite intervals. The common seal, if it be not as nocturnal as the cat tribe, from which it may have descended, is certainly a very great sleeper.

The eye of the puffin is, by virtue of its setting, almost as marked a feature as the beak itself. First it is surrounded by a ring of naked skin, much