ALASKA FUR SEAL. 183 



stay four months before going into the water for the first 

 time after hauHng up in May. 



" This alone is remarkable enough, but it is simply 

 wonderful when we come to associate the condition with 

 the unceasing activity, restlessness, and duty devolved 

 upon the bulls as heads and fathers of large families. 

 They do not stagnate like Bears in caves ; it is evidently 

 accomplished or due to the absorption of their own fat, 

 with which they are so liberally supplied, when they 

 take up their positions on the breeding-grounds, and 

 which gradually diminishes while they remain on it. 

 But still some most remarkable provision must be made 

 for the entire torpidity of the stomach and bowels, con- 

 sequent upon their being empty and unsupplied during 

 this long period, which, however, in spite of the violation 

 of a supposed physiological law, does not seem to affect 

 them, for they come back just as sleek, fat, and ambitious 

 as ever in the following season. 



"I have examined the stomachs of a number which 

 were driven up and killed immediately after their arrival 

 in the spring, and natives here have seen hundreds, even 

 thousands of them during the killing season in June and 

 July, but in no case has anything been found other than 

 the bile and ordinary secretion of healthy organs of this 

 class, with the exception only of finding in every one a 

 snail or cluster of worms, from the size of a walnut to 

 that of one's fist, the fast apparently having no effect 

 on them, for when three or four hundred old bulls were 

 slaughtered late in the fall, to supply the natives with 

 bidarkee or canoe-skins, I found these worms in a lively 

 condition in each paunch cut open, and their presence, I 

 think, gives some reason for the habit which these old 

 bulls have of swallowing small boulders, the stones in 

 some of the stomachs weighing half a pound or so, and 



