ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 65 



or sand or other foreign substances seems to cause them exquisite 

 annoyance, accompanied by immoderate weeping. This involuntary 

 tearfulness so moved Steller that he ascribed it to the processes of the 

 seal's mind, and declared that the seal mothers actually shed tears. 



Range of vision.— I do not think that their range of vision on 

 land, or out of the water, is very great. I have frequently experi- 

 mented with adult fur seals, by allowing them to catch sight of my 

 person, so as to distinguish it as of foreign character, three or four 

 hundred paces off, taking the ijrecaution of standing to the leeward of 

 them when the wind was Wowing strong and then walking uncon- 

 cernedly up to them. I have invariably noticed that they would allow 

 me to approach quite close before recognizing my strangeness; this 

 occurring to them they at once made a lively noise, a medley of 

 coughing, spitting, snorting, and blaating, and plunged in spasmodic 

 lopes and shambled to get away from my immediate neighborhood. As 

 to the pups, they all stupidly stare at the form of a human being until 

 it is fairly on them, when they also repeat in miniature these vocal, 

 gymnastics and physical efforts of the older ones, to retreat or with- 

 draw a few rods, sometimes only a few feet, from the spot upon which 

 you have cornered them, after which they instantly resume their pre- 

 vious occupation, of either sleeping or playing, as though nothing had 

 happened. (See note, 39, M.) 



Power of scent: Odor of the seals. — The greatest activity dis- 

 pla3'ed by any one of the five senses of the seal is evidenced in its 

 power of scent. This faculty is all that can be desired in the line of 

 alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult seal from the soundest, 

 sleep, when from a half to a quarter of a mile distant, no matter how 

 softly I proceeded, if I got to the windward, though they sometimes 

 took alarm when I was a mile off. 



They leave evidences of their being on these great reproductive 

 fields, chiefly at the rookeries, in the hundreds of dead carcasses which 

 mark the last of those animals that have been rendered infirm, sick, 

 or were killed by fighting among themselves in the early part of the 

 season, or of those which have crawled far away from the scene of 

 battle to die from death wounds received in the bitter struggle for a 

 harem. On the rookeries, wherever these lifeless bodies rest, the liv- 

 ing, old and young, clamber and patter backward and forward over 

 and on the putrid remains, and by this constant stirring up of decayed 

 matter, give rise to an exceedingly disagreeable and far-reaching 

 ' ' funk. " This has been, by all writers who have dwelt on the subject, 

 referred to as the smell which these animals emit for another reason — 

 erroneously called the ' ' rutting odor. " If these creatures have any 

 odor peculiar to them when in this condition, I will frankly confess 

 that I am unable to distinguish it from the fumes which are constantly 

 being stirred up and rising out of those decaying carcasses of the older 

 seals, as well as from the bodies of the few pups which have been 

 killed accidentally by the heavy bulls fighting over them, charging 

 back and forth against one another, so much of the time. 



They have, however, a very characteristic and peculiar smell when 

 they are driven and get heated ; their breath exhalations possess a dis- 

 agreeable, faint, sickly odor, and when I have walked within its 

 influence at the rear of a seal drive, I could almost fancy, as it entered 

 r^y nostrils, that I stood beneath an ailanthus tree in bloom; but this 

 ou'or vctu by no means be confounded with what is universally ascribed 

 to another cause. It is also noteworthy that if your finger is touched 

 ever so lightly to a little fur-seal blubber it will smell very much like 

 that which I have ai)preciated and described as peculiar to their breath, 

 H. Doo. 92, pt. 3 5 



