ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 53 



feature, is this very fanning manner in which they use their flippers, 

 when seen on the breeding grounds at tliis season. They also, when 

 idle, as it were, off shore at sea, lie on their sides in the water with 

 only a partial exposure of the body, the head submerged, and then 

 hoist up a fore or hind flipper clear out of the water, at the same time 

 scratching themselves or enjoying a momentary nap; but in this posi- 

 tion there is no fanning. I say "scratching," because the seal, in 

 common with all animals, is preyed upon by vermin, and it has a 

 peculiar species of louse, or i^arasitic tick, that belongs to it. 



Sleeping afloat. — Speaking of the seal as it rests in the water, 

 leads me to remark that they seem to sleep as sound and as comfort- 

 ably, bedded on the waves or rolled by the swell, as they do on the 

 land. They lie on their backs, fold the fore fliiDpers down across the 

 chest, and turn the hind ones up and over, so that the tips rest on 

 their necks and chins, thus exposing simply the nose and the heels of 

 the hind flippers above water, nothing else being seen. In this jiosi- 

 tion, unless it is verj^ rough, the seal sleeps as serenely as did the i^ro- 

 totype of that memorable song who was "rocked in the cradle of the 

 deep." 



Fasting of the seals at the rookeries : Intestinal worms. — All 

 the bulls, from the very first, that have been able to hold their posi- 

 tions, have not left them from the moment of their landing for a single 

 instant, night or day; nor will they do so until the end of the rutting 

 season, which subsides entirely between the 1st and lUth of August, 

 beginning shortly after the coming of the cows in June. Of neces- 

 sitj^, 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 

 actuallj^ stay out four months, in total abstinence, before going back 

 into the water for the first time after ' ' hauling up " in May. They then 

 return as so many bony shadows of what they were onlj^ a few months 

 anteriorl3^ Covered with wounds, abject and spiritless, the}^ labori- 

 ously crawl back to the sea to renew a fresh lease of life. 



Such phj^sical endurance is remarkable enough alone; but it is sim- 

 ply wonderful, wlien we come to associate this fasting with the unceas- 

 ing activity, restlessness, and duty devolved upon the bulls as the 

 heads of lai-ge families. They do not stagnate like hibernating bears 

 in caves; there is not one torpid breath drawn by them in the whole 

 period of their fast. It is evidently sustained and accomplished by 

 the self-absorption of their own fat, with which they are so liberally 

 supplied when they first come out from the sea and take up their 

 positions on the breeding grounds; and which gradually disai^pears, 

 until nothing but the staring hide, protruding tendons, and bones 

 mark the limit of their abstinence. There must be some remarkable 

 provision made by nature for the entire torpidity of the seals' stom- 

 achs and bowels, in consequence of their being empty and unsupplied 

 during this long period, coupled mth the intense activity and jAysical 

 energy of the aninmls throughout that time, 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 hundreds which were driven up 

 and killed immediately after their arrival in the spring, near the vil- 

 lage; I have the word of the natives here, who have seen hundreds of 

 thousands of them opened during the slaughtering seasons past, but 

 in no single case has anything ever been found, other than the bile 

 and ordinary secretions of healthy organs of this class, with the 



