58 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



ing liow rapidly they heal; and, from the fact that I never could see 

 scars on them anywhere except the fresh ones of this year, they must 

 heal effectually and exhibit no trace the next season. 



The cows, like the bulls, vary much in weight, but the extraordi- 

 naiy disjDarity in the size of the sexes, adult, is exceedingly striking. 

 Two females, taken from the rookerj^ nearest to St. Paul village, 

 right under the bluffs and almost beneath the eaves of the natives' 

 houses, called "Nah Speel," after they had brought forth their young, 

 were weighed by mj^self, and their respective returns on the scales 

 were 5G and 100 pounds each; the former being about .3 or 4 years old 

 and the latter over 6 — perhaps 10. Both were fat, or rather in good 

 condition — as good as they ever are. Thus the female is just about 

 one-sixth the size of the male.^ Among the sea lions the proportion 

 is just one-half the bulk of the male,^ while the hair seals, as I have 

 before stated, are not distinguishable in this respect, as far as I could 

 observe, but my notice was limited to a few specimens only. 



Attitudes op fur seals on land.— It is quite beyond my power, 

 indeed entirely out of the question, to give a fair idea of the thousand 

 and one positions in which the seals compose themselves and rest 

 when on land. They may be said to assume every possible attitude 

 which a flexible body can be put into, no matter how characteristic or 

 seeminglj^ forced or constrained. Their joints seem to be double 

 hinged; in fact, all ball-and-socket union of the bones. One favorite 

 position, especiallj^ with the females, is to perch upon a point or edge 

 top of some rock and throw their heads back upon their shoulders, 

 with the nose held directly up and aloft, and then, closing their eyes, 

 to take short naps without changing their attitude, now and then 

 softly lifting one or the other of their long, slender hind flippers, 

 which they slowly wave with that peculiar fanning motion to which I 

 have alluded heretofore. Another attitude, and one of the most com- 

 mon, is to curl themselves up just as a dog does on a hearth rug, 

 bringing the tail and nose close together. They also stretch out, laying 

 the head close to the body, and sleep an hour or two without rising, 

 holding one of the hind flippers up all the time, now and then gently 

 moving it, the eyes being tightly closed. 



I ought, perhaps, to define the anomalous tail of the fur seal here. 

 It is just about as important as the caudal appendage to a bear, even 

 less significant. It is the very emjDhasis of abbreviation. In the old 

 males it is positivelj^ only 4 or 5 inches in length, while among the 

 females only 2^ to 3 inches, whollj^ inconspicuous, and not even rec- 

 ognized by the casual observer. 



Sleeping seals. — I come now to speak of another feature which 

 interested me nearly if not quite as much as any other characteristic 

 of this creature, and that is their fashion of slumber. The sleep of 

 the fur seal, seen on laud, from the old male down to the youngest, is 

 always accompanied by an involuntary, nervous, muscular twitching 

 and slight shifting of the flippei'S, together with ever and anon quiv- 

 ering and uneasy rollings of the body, accompanied by a quick folding 

 anew of the fore flippers, all of which may be signs, as it were, in fact, 

 of their simply having nightmares, or of sporting, in a visionary way, 

 far off in some dreamland sea; but perhaps very much as an old nurse 

 said, in reference to the smiles on a sleeping child's face, they are dis- 

 turbed by their intestinal parasites. I have studied hundreds of such 



' Adult male and female. 



^ Adult male and female; Eumetopias stelleri. 



