ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 139: 



With these teeth alone, backed by the enormous muscular power of 

 a mighty neck and broad shoulders, the sea lion confines its battles to 

 its kind, spurred by terrible energy and heedless and persistent brute 

 courage. No animals that I have ever seen in combat presented a 

 more savage or more craelly fascinating sight than did a brace of old 

 sea-lion bulls which met under my eyes near the Garden Cove at St. 

 George. 



Sea lions fighting at Tolstoi. — Here was a sea-lion rookery, the 

 outskirts of which I had trodden upon for the first time. Tliese old 

 males, surrounded by their meek, polygamous families, were impelled 

 toward each other by tliose latent fires of hate and jealousy which 

 seemed to burst forth and fairly consume the angry rivals. Opening 

 with a long, round, vocal prelude, they gradually came together, as 

 the fur-seal bulls do, with averted heads, as though the sight of each 

 other was sickening — -but fight they must. One would play against 

 the other for an unguarded moment in which to assume the initiative, 

 until it had struck its fangs into the thick skin of its opponent's jowl; 

 then, clenching its jaws, was not shaken off until the struggles of its 

 tortured victim literally tore them out, leaving an ugly, gaping 

 wound — for the sharp ej^eteeth cut a deeper gutter in the skin and 

 flesh than would liave held my hand. Fired into almost supernatural 

 rage, the injured lion retaliated quick as a flash in kind; the hair 

 flew from both of them into the air, the Ijlood streamed down in 

 frotliy tori'ents, while high above the boom of tlie breaking waves and 

 shrill, deafening screams of waterfowl overhead rose the ferocious, 

 hoarse, and desperate roar of the combatants. 



Land travel of the sea lion. — Though provided with flippers, 

 to all external view, as the fur seal is, the sea lion can not, however, 

 make use of them at all in the same free manner. The fur seal may 

 be driven 5 or 6 miles in twentj^-four hours under the most favorable 

 conditions of cool, moist weather; the "seevitchie," however, can 

 only go 2 miles, the conditions of weather and roadway being the 

 same. The sea lion balances and swings its long and heavy neck as 

 a lever to and fro with every hitching up behind of its posterior limbs, 

 which it seldom raises from the ground, drawing thejn up after the 

 fore feet with a slide over the grass or sand and rocks, as the case 

 may be, ever and anon pausing to take a sullen and savage survey 

 of the field and the natives who are driving them. 



The sea lion is polygamous, but it does not maintain any regular 

 system and method in preparing for and attending to its harem, like 

 that so finely illustrated on the breeding grounds of the fur seal ; and 

 it is not so numerous, comparatively speaking. There are not, accord- 

 ing to my best judgment, over 10,000 or 12,000 of these animals alto- 

 gether on the breeding grounds of the Pribilof Islands; it does not 

 haul more than a few rods anywhere or under any circumstances 

 back from the sea. It can not be visited and inspected by men as the 



very curious basis of differentiation. The fur-seal pup, when it spits or coughs in 

 fright, opens its month wide, and the small black and brown teeth seem sadly out 

 of place set in the bright rosy gums around the fresh pink tinge of the tongue and 

 under the red. flushed palate. The canines and incisors of Callorhiiuis find Eitme- 

 to2yiafi are well rooted, but the molars are not; their alveoli are only partly filled, 

 so that when the fleshy giims are removed these teeth will easily rattle out, of their 

 sockets. In looking over hundreds and thousands of the skulls of CaUorJiiniis a^i 

 they bleach out on the killing groiinds, I was struck by their astonishing lack of 

 symmetry; they varied fully as much in their extremes as the skulls of many dif- 

 ferent genera do. The number of teeth differ also; some jaws have but 5 molars, 

 others 6, and others 7. 



