132 ALASKA. 



subsides entirely between tlie 1st and lOtb of August, begin- 

 ning shortly after the coming of the cows in June. Of necessity, 

 therefore, this causes them to fast, to abstain entirely from food 

 of any kind, or water, for three months, at least, and a few of 

 them stay four months before going into the w^ater for the first 

 time after hauling up in May. 



This alone is remarkable enough, but it is simply wonderful 

 when we come to associate the condition with the unceasing 

 activity, restlessness, and duty devolved upon the bulls as 

 heads and fathers of large families. They do not stagnate, like 

 bears in caves; it is evidently accomplished or due to the ab- 

 sorption of their own fat, ^vith which they are so liberally sup- 

 l^lied when they take their positions on the breeding-ground, 

 and which gradually diminishes wliile they remain on it. But 

 still some most remarkable provision must be made for the en- 

 tire torpidity of the stomach and bowels, consequent upon their 

 being empty and unsupplied during this long period, which, 

 however, in spite of the violation of a supposed physiological 

 law, does not seem to affect them, for they come back just as 

 sleek, fat, and ambitious as ever in the following season. 



I have examined the stomachs of a number which were driven 

 up and killed immediately after their arrival in the spring, and 

 natives here have seen hundreds, even thousands, of them 

 during the killing-season in June and July, but in no case has 

 anything been found other than the bile and ordinary secre- 

 tions of healthy organs of this class, with the exception only of 

 finding in erery one a snarl or cluster of worms,* from the size of 

 a walnut to that of one's fist, the fast apparently having no effect 

 on them, for when thret; or four hundred old bulls were slaugh- 

 tered late in the fall, to supply the natives with '' bidarkee" or 

 canoe skins, I found these worms in a lively condition in every 

 l^aunch cut open, and their presence, I think, gives some reason 

 for the habit which these old bulls have of swallowing small 

 bowlders, the stones in some of the stomachs weighing half a 

 pound or so, and in one paunch 1 found about five pounds in 

 the aggregate of larger pebbles, which in grinding against one 

 another must destroy, in a great measure, these intestinal pests. 

 The sea-lion is also troubled in the same way by a similar 

 species of worm, and I have preserved a stomach of one of these 

 animals in which are more than ten pounds of bowlders, some of 

 them alone quite large. The greater size of this animal enables 



*Nematoda. 



