Birds have no ears, nor have crocodiles, nor frogs, nor snakes.  Ears seem to be for beasts only.  And not for all beasts.  Seals are divided by naturalists into two great families—­those with ears, and those without.  The common seal belongs to the latter class, and the sea-lion to the former.  A common seal lives in the sea, and when it does wriggle up on the beach of an iceberg there is nothing to hear, I suppose, or perhaps when it wants to listen it raises a flipper to its ear.  I never saw one doing so, but we do not see everything that happens in the world.  The sea-lion, with its stouter limbs, can lift its forepart, raise its head and look about it, and even flop about the ice-fields at a respectable rate.  And there is no doubt that one of these is as much above an earless seal as fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay.  When performing seals are exhibited at a circus sitting on chairs, catching balls on the points of their noses and playing diabolo with them, or balancing billiard cues on their snouts, and doing other miraculous things, they are always sea-lions, not common seals.  Of course, I do not mean to insinuate that sea-lions invented the ear and stuck it on:  that would be unscientific; but I mean that their general intelligence and interest in affairs created that demand for more distinct hearing which led to the development of an ear trumpet.  This view is wholly scientific, though pedants may quarrel with my way of putting it.

The sea-lion’s ears are very minute, mere apologies one might think; but don’t be hasty.  The finny prey of the sea-lion makes no sound as it skims through the water; and perhaps the padded foot of that stealthy garrotter, the Polar bear, makes as little on the smooth ice; for catching the one and not being caught by the other the sea-lion must trust to the keenness of its great goggle eyes.  But it is a social beast, and it wants to catch the bellowing of its fellows far across the foggy waste of ice-floes; and that little leather scoop standing behind the ear-hole seems to be just the instrument required to catch and send down those sounds which would otherwise glance off the glossy fur and never find entrance to the tiny orifice at all.  If it were any larger than is absolutely necessary it would be a serious impediment to a professional diver and swimmer like the sea-lion.  This is the reason why otters have very small ears, and why whales and porpoises have none at all.

But when a beast lives on land the conditions are all altered, and then the ear blossoms out into an infinite variety of forms and sizes, from each of which the true naturalist may divine the manner of life of its wearer as surely as the palmist tells your past, present and future from the lines on your hand.  First, he will divide all beasts into those that pursue and those that flee, oppressors and oppressed.  The former point their ears forwards, but the latter backwards.  There may be a good deal of free play