THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 47 



Weight of female seals. — The adult females will correspond with the three years old males in the above 

 table, the younger cows weighing frequently only 75 pounds, and many of the older ones going as high as 120, but 

 an average of 80 to 85 pounds is the rule. Those specimens of the females which I weighed were examples taken 

 by me for transmission to the Smithsonian Institution, otherwise T should not have been permitted to make this 

 record of their weight, inasmuch as weighing them means to kill them ; and the law and the habit, or rather the 

 prejudice of the entire community up there, is unanimously in opposition to any such proceeding, -for they never touch 

 females here, and never set their foot on or near the breeding-grounds on such an errand. It will be noticed, also, 

 that I have no statement of the weights of these exceedingly fat and heavy males which first appear on the breeding- 

 grounds in the spring; those which I have referred to, in the table above given, were very much heavier at the 

 time of their first appearance in May and June, than at the moment when they were in my hands, in July r ; but 

 the cows, and the other classes, do not sustain protracted fasting, and therefore their weights may be considered 

 substantially the same throughout the year. 



Change in weight. — Thus, from the fact that all the young seals and females do not change much in weight 

 from the time of their first coming out in the spring, till that of their leaving in the fall and early winter, I feel 

 safe in saying that they feed at irregular but not long intervals, during the time that they are here under our 

 observation, since they are constantly changing from laud to water and from water to land, day in and day out. I 

 do not think that the young males fast longer than a week or ten days at a time, as a rule. 



Dispersal of the " holluschickie ". — By the end of October and the 10th of November, the great mass of 

 the "holluschickie", the trooping myriads of English bay, Southwest point, Eeef parade, Lukannon sands, the table- 

 lands of Polavina, and the mighty hosts of Novastoshnah, at St. Patd, together with the quota of St. George, had 

 taken their departure from its shores, and had gone out to sea, spreading with the receding schools of fish that were 

 now returning to the deep waters of the North Pacific, where, in that vast expanse, over which rolls an unbroken 

 billow, 5,000 miles from Japan to Oregon, they spend the winter and the early spring, until they reappear and 

 break up, with their exuberant life, the dreary winter isolation of the land which gave them birth. 



Taste of the seals in the matter of weather. — A few stragglers remain, however, as late as the snow 

 and ice will permit them to, in and after December ; they are all down by the water's edge then, and haul up 

 entirely on the rocky beaches, deserting the sand altogether; but the first snow that falls makes them very uneasy, 

 and I have seen a large hauling-ground so disturbed by a rainy day and night, that its hundreds of thousands of 

 occupants fairly deserted it. The fur-seal cannot bear, and will not endure, the spattering of sand into its eyes, 

 which always accompanies the driving of a rain-storm; they take to the water, to reappear when the nuisance 

 shall be abated. 



The weather in which the fur-seal delights is cool, moist, foggy, and thick enough to keep the sun always 

 obscured, so as to cast no shadows. Such weather, which is the normal weather of St. Paul and St. George, 

 continued for a few weeks in June and July, brings up from the sea millions of fur seals. But, as I have before 

 said, a little sunshine, which raises the temperature as high as 50° to 55° Fahr., will send them back from the 

 hauling grounds almost as quickly as they came. Fortunately, these warm, suuny days on the Pribylov islands are 

 so rare that the seals certainly can have no ground of complaint, even if we may presume they have any at all. 

 Some curious facts in regard to their selection of certain localities on these islands, and their abandonment of others, 

 I will discuss in a succeeding chapter, descriptive of the rookeries ; this chapter is illustrated by topographical 

 surveys made by myself. 



Albinos. — I looked everywhere and constantly, when treading my way over acres of ground which were 

 fairly covered with seal-pups, and older ones, for specimens that presented some abuormity, that is, monstrosities, 

 albinos, etc., such as I have seen in our gi*eat herds of stock ; but I was, with one or two exceptions, unable to note 

 anything of the kind. I have never seen any malformations or "monsters" among the pups and other classes of 

 the fur-seals, nor have the natives recorded anything of the kind, so far as I could ascertain from them. I saw 

 only three albino pups among the multitudes on St. Paul, and none on St. George. They did not differ, in any 

 respect, from the normal pups in size and shape. Their hair, for the first coat, was a dull ocher all over ; the fur 

 whitish, changing to a rich brown, the normal hue; the flippers and muzzle were a pinkish flesh-tone in color, and 

 the iris of the eye sky-blue. When they shed the following year, they are said to have a dirty, yellowish white 

 color, which makes them exceedingly conspicuous when mixed in among a vast majority of black pups, gray 

 yearlings, and "holluschickie" of their kind. (See note, 39, O.) 



Where do the seals die? — It is perfectly evident that a large percentage of this immense number of seals 

 must die every year from natural limitation of life. They do not die on these islands; that much I am certain of. 

 Not one dying a natural death could I find or hear of on the grounds ; they evidently lose their lives at sea, 

 preferring to sink with the rigor mortis into the cold, blue depths of the great Pacific, or beneath the green waves 

 of Bering sea, rather than to encumber and disfigure their summer haunts on the Pribylov islands. 



