THE FUR-SEAL HAREM. 57 



THE FASTING OF THE SEALS. 



It is of course known that the fur seals are probably capable of abstaining from 

 food for greater or less periods. Thus the cows evidently do not leave the rookeries 

 on their first landing within ten to twelve days. Whether such periods of abstinence 

 from food are regular or not, we do not know; but that the bachelors and cows 

 do not fast for any considerable part of the summer is plain, if for no other reason, 

 from the fact that they maintain a uniform condition throughout the season, always 

 showing a plentiful supply of blubber, but appearing in no better condition at one 

 time than another. 



The bulls, on the other hand, which do undoubtedly fast, on coming ashore in the 

 early spring are loaded down with blubber, which is gradually absorbed, leaving the 

 animal thin and greatly reduced by the time the breeding season is over. There is 

 abundant reason why the bulls should fast, for it would be impossible for them to 

 leave their places, and nature has made provision for their necessities. A similar 

 provision seems to be made for the period of fasting which the newly weaned pup 

 must probably endure after going to sea on the winter migration, before it has become 

 proficient in the new art of fishing. During the months of October and November, 

 and up to the time of their departure, the pups grow excessively fat. 



THE HAREM. 



The unit of life on the rookeries is the harem. The rookeries themselves are 

 merely great bands or masses of harems grouped together along suitable beaches. 

 The average size of a harem, as found from the enumerations of 1896 and 1897, is about 

 thirty females to a single bull. The minimum and maximum limits range from a 

 single cow to loO. The single cow harems are formed generally in proximity to large 

 harems, and are as a rule the result of stealing on the part of idle bulls. Such bulls, 

 when the harem master's attention is taken from his charges, rush in, seize and carry 

 off cows bodily. It is rarely that such pirate harems can be made to exceed a 

 single cow, as the animal must be held against her will, and in the effort to secure a 

 second the first one usually escapes. Sometimes, however, through the voluntary 

 desertion of cows from the large harems, it happens that these small harems rival the 

 original ones in size and are again subject to pillage by other idle bulls still further 

 in the rear. These small harems are found chiefly in the rear of and on the flanks of 

 the large breeding masses, such as on Tolstoi, Reef, and Vostochni. 



LARGE HAREMS. 



The excessively large harems are the result of accident or favorableness of loca- 

 tion rather than strength or prowess in the bulls. They are to be found in isolated 

 stations and where peculiar angles and turns of the breeding ground hem them in. 

 Thus on Gorbatch rookery a large bull held in his charge a group of 150 cows for a 

 week or ten days.* When allowance is made for absentees, this harem must have 

 numbered between 200 and 300 cows. Behind this bull and his family were a score 

 of idle bulls lying about on the cinder slope. The secret of his success lay simply in 

 the fact that the harem occupied a triangular piece of ground bounded on two sides 

 by precipitous cliffs, and it was only necessary for the bull to guard the neck of land 



* Daily Journal, Pt. II, under date of July 15, 1897. 



