ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



73 



The yearling males, however, make a radical change when they 

 shed foV the first time, for they come out from their "staginess" in 

 a nearly uniform dark gray, and gray and black mixed, and lighter, 

 with dark ocher to whitish on the upper and under parts, respectively. 

 This coat, next year, when they appear as two-year-olds, shedding 

 for the three-year-old coat, is a very much darker gray, and so on 

 to the third, fourth, and fifth season; then after this, with age, they 

 begin to grow more gr^y and brown, with rufous-ocher and whitish- 

 tipped over-hair on the shoulders. Some of the very old bulls change 

 in their declining years to a uniform shade all over of dull-grayish 

 ocher. The full glory and beauty of the seal's mustache is denied to 

 him until lie has attained his seventh or eighth year. 



Comparative size of females and males. — The female does not 

 get her full growth and weight until the end of her fourth year, so far 

 as I have observed, but she does most of her growing longitudinally 

 in the first two; after she has passed her fourth and fifth years, she 

 weighs from 30 to 50 pounds more than she did in the days of her 

 youthful maternity. 



The male does not get his full growth and weight until the close of 

 his seventh year, but realizes most of it, osteologically speaking, by 

 the end of the fifth; and from this it may be perhaps truly inferred 

 that the male seals live to an average age of 18 or 20 years, if undis- 

 turbed in a normal condition, and that the females attain ten or twelve 

 seasons under the same favorable circumstances. Their respective 

 weights, when fully mature and fat in the spring, will, in regard to 

 the male, strike an average of from 400 to 500 pounds, while the 

 females will show a mean of from 70 to 80 pounds. 



I did not permit myself to fall into error in estimating this matter 

 of weight, because I early found that the apparent huge bulk of a sea- 

 lion bull or fur-seal male, when placed upon the scales, shrank far 

 below my notions. I took a great deal of pains on several occasions 

 during the killing season to have a platform scale carted out into the 

 field, and as the seals were knocked down, and before they were bled, 

 I had them carefully weighed, constructing the following table from 

 my observations : 



Table shotcing the iveight, size, and growth of the fur seal {Callorhinus ursinus) , 

 from the pup to the adult, male and female. 



