34 G. E. H. BARRETT-HAMILTON [july 



after they have been born. Each female who has a pup lies quite close 

 to it for some days. If she moves her position she carries the pup 

 with her, usually holding it by the back of the neck, but sometimes 

 lower down the back. If the pup moves from her it is caught and 

 pulled back to its mother's side. It is no wonder then, after such a 

 close association between mother and pup in the earlier part of the 

 season, if later on they can, and do, recognise each other among the 

 multitudes of seals occupying a rookery. 



On one occasion (26th June, at the South rookery) I saw a cow 

 who had quarrelled with another cow, and had been defeated, retire 

 out of the pod of massed seals carrying her pup with her, holding it 

 by its back near the tail. Another cow seized the pup by its neck, 

 and a tug-of-war ensued before the mother got off with it. Finally, 

 before she got quite clear another cow carefully smelt the pup, 

 evidently with a view to be sure that it was not her own. On 

 another occasion (at Kishotchnaya, on the 2nd July) I felt almost 

 sure that a cow whom I saw moving her pup did so in order to save 

 it from the ponderous tramplings of a bull. 



The little new-born pups are the source of constant squabbling 

 among their mothers, and any attempt at familiarity on the part of a 

 stranger is at once resented in the most savage manner. 



Few points are, indeed, more striking in the character of the Fur 

 Seal than the spirit of inconsistency which causes the cows to lie so 

 closely huddled together on the beach that one of them can hardly 

 move without disturbing two or three of her neighbours, and all, one 

 would think, must be imbued with the most friendly and sociable 

 dispositions ; yet the slightest stir or familiarity on the part of a 

 neighbour is resented with a fierce snap, and if a pup ventures to 

 approach a strange female in mistake for its mother it is at once 

 seized, savagely shaken, and thrown away — even killed — much as a 

 terrier treats a rat. Yet Mr. H. W. Elliott has devoted some space to 

 a description of the meek and dove-like character of these female seals ! 



Not only is any familiarity on the part of their own species 

 resented, but I have seen a female hold a regular sparring match with 

 a glaucous-winged gull (Zarus glaucescens, Naum.) who wished to 

 make a meal off some recent placenta, and the little blue foxes which 

 sat as close to the seals as they dared were constantly being chased 

 away if they ventured to approach a little too close to the rookery. 

 Sometimes they pay for their impudence with their lives, and I have 

 several times seen a blue fox chased away by a cow who thought it had 

 approached too near to the rookery. In 1896, I found at Zapadni, 

 Copper Island, the carcase of a young blue fox which had evidently been 

 recently killed by some cow or bachelor, whose seeming meekness it had 

 trusted too much, and had received in return a fatal bite in the neck. 



The newly -arriving females were treated with equal want of 

 courtesy. Their desire always seemed to get right into the middle of 



