142 The Ottawa Naturalist. [February 



slides, and gave interesting facts regarding the habits and life-history 

 of the seals. 



When the Russians first visited the seal islands descriptive words 

 were coined for animals of the two sexes and various ages. The 

 breeding males were called "old bulls"; the females, "cows"; the non- 

 breeding males, "holluschickie" or bachelors; and the young seals 

 "pups." The old bulls live to a considerable age and attain great 

 size, animals weighing 600 pounds or over being not uncommon. The 

 cows are much smaller, seldom weighing more than 100 pounds. The 

 males reach maturity when six or seven years old, the females the 

 second year. Seals are polygamous animals, each male gathering 

 around him as many females as he can secure. The average size of 

 the harems, as they are called, was in 1914 sixty. As the sexes are 

 born in about equal numbers, it is evident that a very considerable 

 percentage of the male life may be taken without injury to the main 

 herd providing a sufficient surplus is left to furnish scope for the 

 working out of natural selection. 



While the fur-seals are born on the land their natural element, 

 of course, is the water and there they spend the greater part of their 

 lives and secure their food. At the present time the fur-seals which go 

 in the summer to the Pribiloff and Commander islands are distributed 

 over the North Pacific Ocean south of the Aleutian Islands, the main 

 body of the so-called American herd living off the coasts of Washing- 

 ton, Vancouver Island and southern Alaska, but even when their 

 numbers were greater not many were seen from ships. The distribu- 

 tion depends chiefly, of course, on the food supply, which is made up 

 chiefly of surface fishes and squid. They have frequently been found 

 as far south as San Francisco. When pelagic sealing was at its 

 height the schooners left Victoria and other ports about the month of 

 March or later, the date of sailing depending upon the willingness of 

 the hunters and boatmen to brave the storms of winter and early 

 spring. As the seals moved north they approached the coast, one of 

 the favorite hunting grounds being just north of Sitka where they 

 were' found in large numbers. Following the coast north and west 

 and travelling quickly from one feeding ground to another the first 

 seals reach the Pribiloff Islands towards the end of April, the adult 

 females and older bachelors arrive there early in June, the two-year- 

 olds mainly in July and the yearlings in the latter part of August and 

 September. While on the islands the old bulls do not feed at all. In 

 fact from the day they arrive and take up the station of their choice 

 they neither eat nor drink until they return to the sea in September or 

 later. During this time they not only take part in continual fights 

 but exercise an almost perfect control over their harems, no "cow" 

 being allowed to leave until she has been fertilized. The "cows" do 

 not usually come ashore until they are about to give birth to their 



