18 G. £. H. BARRETT-HAMILTON [JULY 
Fur Seal, so graphically described by Mr. H. W. Elliott: how the herds 
which spend the winter months in the warmer waters of the Pacific 
south of their island homes, move gradually northwards in the early 
part of the year, and in spring, land on the rookery shores, the females 
to give birth to their young, the old males to commence a jealous 
watch over their hardly-won harems, which they only forsake when 
hunger and fatigue or the valour of a rival forces them to leave their 
posts; how the young males, unable to face their seniors and win for 
themselves places on the coveted rookery beach, while away the 
summer in sleep and frolic on their own hauling-grounds, whence the 
sealers take their toll of skins; how the seals remain in the neighbour- 
hood of the rookeries until the cold gales of autumn warn them to 
again depart southward. Such, in broad outline, is the natural history 
of the Fur Seal, and with such general matters of common knowledge 
I have here nothing to do. It will be my business rather to attract 
attention to certain of the less known features of what I may call the 
social life of the animal. 
I assume also a knowledge of such sealing terms as bull, cow, 
bachelor, pup, harem, rookery, and hauling-ground. Any further 
technical terms which it may be found necessary to use will be ex- 
plained as the occasion arises. 
It must be clearly remembered, however, that my visit to the 
rookeries was paid at a time when the numbers of the seals had ad- 
mittedly decreased since the date of the descriptions of some of the 
older authorities, as, for instance, those of Mr. H. W. Elliott. Hence, 
if what I saw does not always quite closely correspond with the observa- 
tions of older naturalists, it does not necessarily follow that one or the 
other of us is in the wrong. It may be that both they and I are right, 
and that the differences which it is our duty to record actually existed 
and are due to the prevalence of different conditions on the rookeries 
at different times, consequent on their disturbance by man. 
My Experience. 
My personal experience of the Northern Fur Seal was gained in 
the two breeding-seasons of 1896 and 1897, during which I actually 
lived in turn on every island where there is any important rookery at 
the present time. On one island or another I had the seals under my 
observation almost throughout the duration of their summer stay on 
land. My movements were as follows:—In 1896 I gained my first 
introduction to the seals at the small rookery on Robben Island (in 
the Okhotsk Sea), which I examined on July 11. In the same year I 
spent July 19 to August 10 on Bering’s Island, and August 11 to 
25 on Copper Island, on the western side of the Bering’s Sea. I 
spent September 1 to October 4 on St. Paul Island (including two 
days at sea among the pelagic sealers in the United States Revenue 
