104 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Pangs of impending parturition alone prompt females to land. — The females do not land until they 

 are obliged to by the precipitation of this event of parturition. They appear over the breeding-grounds of St. Paul 

 just as they come in contact with the shore — guided and influenced at the moment of approach to the islands by only 

 one ruling thought, and that is, to reach as near as possible the locality upon which they resided in former years. 

 Soon after landing, which I have heretofore described, the birth of the young takes place, and in thiswise: the cow 

 shows, an hour or so prior to delivery, great nervous agitation; she trembles all over; her eyes blinking, and 

 flippers twitching; rolling, stretching, and thoroughly uneasy, until the labor-pains ensue. If the ground where 

 she happens to rest is rocky, she manages to lie upon the top of a bowlder, her hind-flippers work spasmodically 

 with a wavy, fan-like motion backward and forward, as she rests full upon her stomach, with the fore-flippers 

 alternately pressed tightly to the rock or closely to her sides, like pectoral fins; she sways her head, her eyes 

 are partly closed and her mouth slightly opened in panting, during the fifteen or twenty minutes which usually 

 ensue between the first contraction of the uterus, until the expulsion of the intrauterine life takes place. These 

 labor-pains are not, in my opinion, at all very severe or abnormal in any respect. The pup carries with it, at the 

 moment of birth, the entire placental pouch or "after-birth". This envelope is broken, usually by the mother, in 

 forcing the labor and during the first expulsion of the pup's head, which is always presented in advance. The 

 little " kotick" may be said to fairly drop upon its feet, for the moment it appears from withiu the natal walls it 

 seems to be in full possession of all its faculties ; its eyes are wide open, and its voice is raised in weak, husky 

 bleatings, as it feebly paddles around, still attached to the umbilical cord, which, by its own efforts, it pulls asunder 

 as it flounders about on the rocks or ground of the rookery. The mother, in the meantime, gives her offspring 

 none of that attention so marked in the case of the canidcv and other carnivores, not even turning to look at it; but 

 she draws herself up with an expression of intense comfort and relief, throwing her head back with a gentle, 

 swaying motion, as she fans herself slowly with either one or both of the hind-flippers. She also pays no attention 

 to the cleansing of her own person, the after-birth lying undisturbed by her; it will be speedily trampled under 

 foot and ground out of recognizance by the restless multitudes around her, that pass to and fro. The pup quickly 

 dries off, with rapid alternations of short naps and awakenings, in which it gets up and on its flippers to essay 

 brief scrambles over the rocks and ground until, in nosing about, it claims the attention of its mother (sometimes 

 hours after birth); this she gives by gently elevating her abdomen and turning her parts posteriorly, so that 

 one or two of the obscure teats, filled with milk, can be seized by the hungry pup, which now nurses therefrom 

 greedily, even to gorgiug itself. 



Milk of the fur-seal. — The milk of the fur-seal mother is very rich and creamy, and the secretion is 

 always abundant, but there is not, under any circumstances, the enlarged udder and mammae peculiar to dogs and 

 similar animals; the nipples are scarcely distinguishable, even when exposed to the reach and notice of the young. 



Irregular feeding of the tups. — The umbilicus of the pup rapidly sloughs off, and the little fellow grows 

 apace, nursing to-day heartily in order that he may, perhaps, go the next two, three, or four days without another 

 drop from the maternal fount; for it is the habit of the mother-seal to regularly and frequently leave her young, 



spots of its birth — small fly-dots of land in the map of Bering sea and the North Pacific — is a very remarkable exhibition of its skill in 

 navigation. While the Russians were established at Bodega and Ross, California, sixty years ago, they frequently shot fur-seals at sea. 

 \\ ben hunting the sea-otter off the coast between Fuca straits and the Farralones. Many of these animals, late in May and early in June, 

 were so far advanced in pregnancy that it was deemed certain by their captors that some shore must be close at hand upon which the 

 near impending birth of the pup took place; thereupon, the Russians searched over each rod of the coast-line of the mainland and the 

 archipelago, between California and the peninsula of Alaska, vainly seeking everywhere there for a fur-seal rookery. They were slow to 

 understand how animals, so close to the throes of parturition, could strike out into the broad ocean to swim 1,500 or 2,000 miles withiu a 

 week or ten days ere they lauded on the Pribylov group, and, almost immediately after, give birth to their offspring. 



There is no record made which shows that the fur-seals have any regular or direct course of travel up or down the northwest coast. 

 They are principally seen in the open sea, eight or ten miles from land, outside the heads of the straits of Fuca, and from there as far 

 north as Dixon sound. During May and June they are aggregated in greatest numbers here, though examples are reported the whole year 

 round. The only fur-seal that I saw, orwhichwas noticed by the crew of the "Reliance", in her cruise, June 1 to 9, from Port Townsend to 

 Sitka, was a solitary "holluschack" that we disturbed at sea well out from the lower end of Queen Charlotte island; then, from Sitka 

 to Kadiak, we saw nothing of the fur-seal until we hauled off from Poiut Greville, and coming down by Ookamok islet, a squad of agile 

 "holltischiekie" suddenly appeared among a school of hump-back whales, sporting in the most extravagant manner around, under, and 

 even leaping over the wholly indifferent cetaceans. From this eastern extremity of Kadiak island clear up to the Pribylov group we daily 

 saw fur-seals here and there in small bands, or also as lonely voyageurs, all headed for one goal. We were badly outsailed by them; 

 ndeed, the chorus of a favorite " South-Sea pirate's" song, as incessantly sung on the cutter's "'tween decks", seemed to have special 



iadaptation to their vanishing forms: 



" For they bore down from the windwi'ard, 

 A sailin' seven knots to our four'n." 



The ancient Greeks seemed to have been impressed somewhere by rookery odors, since Homer says — 



" The web-footed seals forsake the stormy swell, 

 And, sleeping in herds, exhale nauseous smell." 



Where this illustrious bard sniffed np this characteristic unpleasantness of breeding-seals, I am at a loss to say. The Pribylov islands 

 and the great An tare tie grounds were as far from thai poet then, as the moon is from us to-day. He must have been introduced to it within 

 the confines of the Caspian sea, or else credibly informed, by trustworthy authority, of this peculiarity of the large herds of Phoeidte i" 

 those waters. Small bands, however, of hair-seals breed now, as they bred then, in the Mediterranean and Black seas. He may have 

 stumbled upon a few of them while pros. .king his muse in lonely travels over Grecian pelagic shores. 



