SEA-LIONS AND FUR-SEALS. 333 



does not depend on mere change of attitude, but also on the un- 

 usually lithe and mobile nature of the entire spinal column and 

 ribs, furnished as these are with an abundance of cartilaginous 

 material and fibro-elastic ligaments." 



The Otaria has generally thirty-six teeth, with canines and in- 

 cisors of enormous size, so that when they close upon each other 

 " anything that may happen to come between them is held as in a 

 vise," and small molars, so solid that sailors have sometimes mis- 

 taken them for flints. According to Mr. J, W. Clark, of Cam- 

 bridge, whose " Davis Lecture " on these animals at the London 

 Zoological Gardens condenses a mass of information about them, 

 " The Otaria, having caught its prey, holds it in its mouth by 

 means of its powerful canines and incisors, and, raising its head, 

 swallows it whole. When it has caught a fish too large to be thus 

 disposed of, it has been seen to give its head a sudden twist, so as 

 to break off a portion, which it swallows rapidly. It then dives 

 into the water, picks up the other portion, and repeats the tearing 

 process until the last fragment is devoured. Their food consists 

 of fish, mollusca, crabs, and sea-fowl, especially penguins, which 

 they catch in a most ingenious way. They lie motionless in the 

 water, with only a small portion of their nose above the surface. 

 This attracts the attention of the bird, which mistakes it for some- 

 thing eatable, and, approaching to catch it, falls a prey to the craft 

 of its adversary." They have also the habit of swallowing peb- 

 bles, of which more than twenty pounds, some of them weighing 

 half a pound, have been taken from one animal. The sailors say 

 that this is for ballast, and a story is told of a female seal that 

 was seen teaching her cub to swallow the pebbles ; while another 

 story, by an officer of the British navy, is of a sea-lion that was 

 seen "discharging ballast." 



The breeding habits of the sea-lions, as they are described by 

 several authors, among them Mr. J. A. Allen, in the " Harvard 

 Bulletin," and Mr. H. W. Elliott, in his report on the Pribylov 

 group of islands, are extremely curious. They frequent solitary 

 islands, away from inhabited coasts, in large numbers, and are 

 supposed generally to return to the same place, or near it, year 

 after year. Here they occupy the spaces between high -water 

 mark and the foot of the cliffs — to which the sailors have given 

 the name of " rookeries " — using the beach as a playground for 

 the pups, and fixing their sleeping-places on the tops of the cliffs. 



Only the old males or "married seals," and the full-grown 

 females or " mothers," are allowed upon the rookeries. The young- 

 seals — the young males are called " bachelors " — are left to swim 

 about in the water, or are allowed to retire behind the rookeries 

 to the uplands back of the grounds that the old seals have appro- 

 priated to themselves. Communication between their upland 



