ELEPHANT SEAL: BREEDING HABITS 237 



five to ten minutes at a time, and must swallow a considerable amount of air as they 

 make plenty of noise during the process. When hungry, the pup, lying alongside the 

 mother, commences barking and nuzzling round the body of the mother in a feeble 

 way until she turns on her side, when it soon finds the teats. There are two teats, one 

 on each side of the middle line about one-quarter of the animal's length from the tail; 

 they are kept retracted when the pup is not suckling. The flow of milk is small, as is 

 shown by the long fine jets which squirt from the teat for a moment when the pup 

 stops sucking. The pup takes milk from one teat only at each feed, when small usually 

 from the lower one as the cow lies on her side, but when older from either indiff"erently. 



Pups. At birth the cry of the pups is a shrill staccato barking, very much like that 

 of a dog puppy, but this gradually changes, so that by the time they are a month old 

 the cry is very much deeper and harsher. At this age they start to get the voice charac- 

 teristic of the adult, and when excited raise up their heads and attempt to roar like 

 their parents ; but at first they are able to produce nothing but a hissing sound in the 

 throat. When slightly older they can produce a rattle in the throat, which gradually 

 deepens to the proper roar as they get larger, though even at the end of the season it 

 is still comparatively feeble. 



The pups grow very rapidly. At birth they are about 3 ft. long and at the end of the 

 first month they are about 4 ft. long. The greatest increase, however, is in girth. At 

 birth they are thin and have little blubber on them but the thickness of this very 

 rapidly increases so that, by the time the coat changes, they are nearly as broad as 

 they are long. 



The pups do not have any very definite time for leaving their mothers, but roughly 

 it is about the time that the coat change is half completed. When they leave them they 

 congregate in batches of as many as twenty or more; many join these bands before the 

 coat change is complete, yet on the other hand a number have been observed still 

 suckling after the coat change was complete. When they leave the mothers they do 

 not immediately take to the water but lie around sleeping on the beaches or playing 

 in the streams of fresh water or in the shallow water near the shore (Plate XXI, fig. 2). 

 By January they will take to the water much more readily if disturbed than when they 

 are younger. Once they have taken to playing in the shallow water they soon learn 

 to take longer excursions into deeper water, and it is then that they start feeding on 

 their own account. From the time that they leave the mothers until they take to the 

 water — about six weeks — they do not feed, but exist on their enormously thick blubber. 

 At the end of December they are very noticeably thinner than they are when the coat 

 is changed, being more fusiform and less nearly globular in shape. They do not finally 

 leave the beaches and take to a pelagic life for some time longer. During the early 

 part of the year they are continually hauling out to sleep, and finally leave in April 

 and May when the adults also go. 



Harems : Pugnacity of the Bulls. The harems are formed by the cows hauling out 

 in bunches to give birth to their pups, as mentioned above, and later these groups are 

 annexed by the bulls. When a number of harems lie close to each other on the beach 



