60 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



little animals are careless enough to pass beyond this bonndary, then 

 I can go up to them and carry them off before the eye of the old Turk 

 without receiving from him the slightest attention in their behalf — a 

 curious guardian, forsooth. 



It is surprising to me how few of these young pups get crushed to 

 death while the jionderous males are floundering over them, engaged 

 in fighting and quarreling among themselves. I have seen two bulls 

 dash at each other Avith all the energy of furious rage, meeting right 

 in the midst of a small "pod" of 40 or 50 pujjs, tramp over them with 

 all their crushing weight, and bowling them out right and left in 

 every direction by the impetus of their movements, without injuring 

 a single one, as far as I could see. Still, when we come to consider 

 the fact that, despite the great weight of the old males, their broad, 

 flat flippers and yielding bodies may i3ress down heavilj'on these little 

 fellows without actually breaking bones or mashing them out of shape, 

 it seems questionable whether more than 1 per cent of all the pups 

 born each season on these great rookeries of the Pribilof Islands are 

 destroj^ed in this manner on the l)reeding grounds.^ 



The vitality of the fur seal is simpl}^ astonishing. His physical 

 organization i^asses beyond the fabled nine lives of the cat. As a 

 slight illustration of its tenure of life, I will mention the fact that one 

 morning the chief came to me with a ])up in his arms, wliich had just 

 been born, and was still womb moist, saying that the motlier had been 

 killed at Tolstoi by accident, and he supposed that I would like to 

 have a "choochil."^ I took it up into my laboratory, and finding 

 that it could walk about and make a great noise, I attempted to feed 

 it, with the idea of liaving a comfortable subject to my pencil, for 

 life study, of the young in the varied attitudes of sleep and motion. 

 It refused everything that I could summon to its attention as food; 

 and, alternately sleeping and walking, in its" clumsy fashion, about 

 the floor, it actually lived nine days — spending the half of every day 

 in floundering over the floor, accompanying all movement with a 

 persistent, hoarse, bleating cry — and I do not believe it ever had a 

 single drop of its mother's milk. 



In the pup, the head is the onl}^ disproportionate feature at birth, 

 when it is compared with the adult form; the neck being also 

 relativel}^ shorter and thicker. The eye is large, round and full, but 

 almost a "navy blue" at times; it soon changes into the blue-black 

 of adolescence. 



The females appear to go to and come from the water to feed and 

 bathe quite frequently after bearing their young, and the immediate 

 subsequent coitus with the male, and usually return to the spot or its 

 immediate neighborhood, Avhere they leave their pups, crying out for 

 them and recognizing- the individual replies, though ten thousand 

 around altogether should bleat at once. They quickly single out 

 their own and nurse them. It would certainly be a very unfortunate 

 matter if the mothers could not identify their young by sound, since 

 their pups get together like a great swarm of bees and spread out upon 

 the ground in what the sealers call "pods," or clustered groui3s, Avhile 

 they are young and not very large ; but from the middle or end of 

 September until they leave the islands for the dangers of the great 



' The only damage which these little fellows have tip here is being caught by an 

 October gale down at the surf margin when they have not fairly learned to swim. 

 Large numbers have been destroyed by sudden "nips " of this character. 



•Specimen to stuff. 



