92 EEPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 



316. Singularly eiiougii, tlie greatest diversity of opinion was found 

 to prevail, even among those who ought to be best informed on this sub- 

 ject, as to whether the seals leave the land for feeding or other purposes 

 most commonly by day or by night. This difference of opinion obtained 

 not only among the Whites, but also among the natives, and it is found 

 both in the Pribyloflf and Commander Islands. Some maintain that 

 the female seal returns to shore every night, others that most of them 

 leave the shore at this time, and, taking all opinions into consideration, 

 the only conclusion that can be arrived at is that the seals go and come 



at all times. Certainly, tliere is no particular period of rest upou 

 57 the rookeries themselves during the breeding season, for they are 



as noisy during the night as by day. Judging from observations 

 made while at anchor near the rookery grounds of St. Paul and St. 

 George, it would appear that the seals are more abundant in the water 

 during the night, when they often surrounded the vessel in great num- 

 bers. On these occasions they seldom seemed to be travelling in any 

 particular direction, but played about, coming up first on one side of 

 the vessel and then on the other, and appeared to be more wary and 

 easily frightened than during the day. 



(J.) — Habits when SncTcling. 



317. When the female seals begin to absent themselves at frequent 

 intervals from the rookery grounds and from their young, as already 

 described, the young begin to travel about in all directions from the 

 actual spot of their birth. Most of them collect in large groups, or 

 "pods," sometimes near the edge of the sea and sometimes at a dis- 

 tance from it, while solitary pups are to be found roving or sleeping 

 everywhere. It has been stated, and the statement has been received 

 without question, that throughout the entire season, and even under 

 the circumstances above described, the female is invariably able to 

 single out, and will suckle only, her own young. Analogy with most 

 other animals appears to favour this view, and probably accounts for 

 the fact, that it has been accepted without proof, which, indeed, as 

 neither the individual mothers nor the individual young can be con- 

 tinuously recognized on the rookeries, would be very hard to obtain. 



318. The analogy just referred to may or may not hold in the case of 

 the fur-seal, which is in many respects very peculiar in its habits. The 

 young of most other animals, if left at any time by the dam, remains 

 where left, and it is very seldom necessary for the mother to select her 

 own x)rogeny from a vast crowd of others. Again, even assuming that 

 she be capable of tbus singling out her own young one, if, as is com- 

 monly supposed, she remains for the greater part of the day, or, accord- 

 ing to some authorities, for several days, in the sea, she must very often 

 wholly fail to find her young, which may have in the meantime wandered 

 off to an entirely different part of the rookery. Under these circum- 

 stances, the female would continue to be unquiet till she got rid of her 

 milk, and must indeed be possessed of great fortitude if she refuses to 

 part with it to any of the thousands of other young seals about her. 

 The difficulty of finding the young must, of course, be vastly increased 

 in cases in which the mother has given birth to two pu^^s, one of which 

 may have wandered in one direction, another elsewhere. 



319. The idea that the female will suckle the pup she has brought 

 forth only.^ appears to have been started by the natives, but, so far as 

 can be ascertained, is first advanced by Bryant, who writes: ''On land- 

 ing, the mother calls out to her young with a plaintive bleat like that 



