FUR SEALS. 
159 
treated with indifference by all the males. By the 
middle of August, the young are all born, and the 
females are again pregnant. The old males, having 
occupied their stations constantly for four months, 
without food, now resign their charge to the younger 
males, and go some distance from shore to feed. 
"The fact of their remaining without food seems 
so contrary to Nature, that it appears to me proper to 
state some of the evidences of it. Having been assured 
by the natives that such was the fact, I deemed it of 
sufficient importance to test it by all the means avail- 
able. Accordingly I took special pains to examine daily 
a large extent of the rookery, and note carefully the 
results of my observations. The rocks on the rookery 
are worn smooth and washed clean by the spring- tides, 
and any discharge of excrement could not fail to be 
detected. I found, in a few instances, where newly - 
arrived seals had made a single discharge of red -colored 
excrement, but nothing was seen afterward to show that 
such discharges were continued, nor any evidence that 
the animals had partaken of food. I also examined the 
stomachs of several young ones, killed by the natives 
for eating, and always without finding any traces of 
food in them. The same was true of the few nursing 
females killed for dissection. 
"About the 20th of July, the great body of the 
previous year's pups arrive, and occupy the slopes with 
the younger class of males, and they continue to be 
mixed together during the remainder of the season. 
The two -years -old females, which pair with the young 
males in the water near the island, also now associate 
with the other females. The pups are five weeks old 
when the old females go off to feed ; they go with the 
mothers to the upland, but keep by themselves. The 
pups born on the lower edge of the rookery, where the 
surf breaks over them occasionally, learn to swim early, 
but the larger portion of them do not take to the 
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