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unerring instinct as to the time when the period of gestation will end. 

 The cows, after being delivered of their i)ui>s, remain for a few weeks 

 with the bulls l)y whom they have been ai)])ropriated. They go from 

 the islands into the sea as often as nature suggests -to be necessary for 

 the purpose of obtaining Hsh for food by which they are nourislied while 

 suckling their young. A cow, while nursing its puji, often goes long 

 distances from the islands in search of fish. Capt. Shepard, of the United 

 States Marine service, who examined tlie skins taken from sealing ves- 

 sels seized in 1S87 and 1889, over 12,000 in number, two thirds or three- 

 fourths being the skins of females, says: " Of the females taken in the 

 Pacific Ocean, and early in the season in Bering Sea, nearly all are 

 heavy with young, and the death of the female necessarily causes the 

 death of the unborn pup seal; in fact, I have seen on nearly every vessel 

 seized the pelts of unborn pups which had been taken from their mothers. 

 Of the females taken in Bering Sea nearly all are in milk, and I have 

 seen the milk come from the carcases of dead females lying on the decks 

 of sealing vessels which were more than 100 miles from the Pribilof 

 Islands. From this fact, and from the further fact that I have seen seals 

 in the water over 150 miles from the islands during the summer, I am 

 convinced that the female, after giving birtli to her young on the rooker- 

 ies, goes at least 150 miles, in many cases, from the islands in search of 

 food." liobert H. McManus, a journalist of Victoria, who had devoted 

 some attention to the sealing industry, referring to a catch of seals 

 "in Bering Sea when he was present, says that over three-fourths of 

 that catch were cows in milk. This, he says, at a distance of 200 

 miles from the rookeries, shows that the nursing cows-ramble all over 

 the Bering Sea in search of their chief food, the codfish, thongh 

 these are chiefly found on the banks along the coast of the Aleutian 

 Islands. In the Canadian Fisheries Report of 1880, it is stated that 

 of the seals taken that year, "the greatest number Avere killed in 

 Bering Sea, and were nearly all cows or female seals;" and in the 

 report of 1888, that " over GO per cent of the entire catch of Bering- 

 Sea is made up of female seals." The record is full of similar evidence. 

 6. Upon returning from her search for food the mother seal hunts up 

 her pup, and will refuse her milk to the pup of any other cow. An intelli- 

 gent witness thus describes the general habits of the mother seal and its 

 pup : " The cows appear to go to and come from the water quite fre- 

 quently, and usually return to the si)otor its neighborhood, where they 

 leave their pups crying out for them and recognizing their individual 



