THE SEA-LION 285 



the skin is treated in a variety of ways before it is ready 

 for the market. 



It appears that about a million of sea-lions are born 

 annually in the Prybiloff Islands, and that with the 

 arrangements now happily effected, we need no longer 

 fear their extermination, in spite of the prodigious 

 number annually destroyed. Besides man, these animals 

 have to dread sharks, sword-fishes, and above all the 

 grampus. 



The habits of the largest variety, Steller's sea-lion, are 

 substantially like those of the fur-bearing kind, but it 

 seems to be a less acutely jealous husband, and the herds 

 do not form so many rows inwards from the shore. Its 

 voice is a bark or a grand, deep roar. 



Such are the creatures known as sea-lions and sea- 

 bears, but to understand them fully we must endeavour 

 to estimate the position in which they stand to other 

 animals, which are their close, or their moderately 

 distant, zoological allies. 



Almost every one knows, to a certain extent, what a 

 seal is. Of such animals there are said to be at least 

 upwards of a dozen and a half distinct species, and nine 

 are found in North America. Five of these nine are 

 also to be met with in the northern part of the Old 

 World. 



Seals may at once be distinguished from sea-lions and 

 sea-bears by the fact that they have no external ear 

 whatever, so that they are known by contrast with the 

 latter as the "earless-seals." None of them have soft 

 woolly under fur like that of the furry sea-lions ; but 

 they have, what the "eared-seals" have not, namely, 

 five well developed claws to each foot. Of the five digits 

 of the hand, the thumb is slightly the longest, while in 

 the hind foot the digits which answer to our great and 



