HABITS. 301 



killed, the longest spires of its whiskers are pulled out, then it 

 is skinned, and its coating of fat cut in sections from its body 

 and transported to the vessel, where, after being ' minced,' the 

 oil is extracted by boiling. The testes are taken out, and, with 

 the selected spires of whiskers, find a market in China the 

 former being used medicinally, and the latter for personal orna- 

 ments. 



"At the close of the season which lasts about three months, 

 on the California coast a large majority of the great herds, 

 both males and females, return to the sea, and roam in all 

 directions in quest of food, as but few of them could find sus- 

 tenance about the waters contiguous to the islands, or points 

 on the mainland, which are their annual resorting-places. They 

 live upon fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and sea-fowls ; always 

 with the addition of a few pebbles or smooth stones, some of 

 which are a pound in weight.* Their principal feathery food, 

 however, is the penguin in the southern hemisphere, and the 

 gulls in the northern j while the manner in which they decoy 

 and catch the gamota of the Mexican and California coasts dis- 

 plays no little degree of cunning. When in pursuit the animal 

 dives deeply under water and swims some distance from where 

 it disappeared ; then, rising cautiously, it exposes the tip of its 

 nose above the surface, at the same time giving it a rotary mo- 

 tion, like that of a water-bug at play. The unwary bird on the 



* "The enormous quantity of food which would be required to maintain 

 the herd of many thousands, which, in former years, annually assembled 

 at the small island of Santa Barbara, would seem incredible, if they daily 

 obtained the allowance given to a male and female Sea Lion on exhibi- 

 tion at Woodward's Gardens, San Francisco, California, where the keeper 

 informed me that he fed them regularly, every day, forty pounds of fresh 

 fish " 



[That the destruction of fish by the Sea Lions on the coast of California 

 is very great is indicated by the following item, which recently went the 

 rounds of the newspapers: "In a recent meeting at San Francisco of the 

 Senate Committee on Fisheries, the State Fish Commissioners, and a com- 

 mittee representing the fishermen of the coast, the question as to the destruc- 

 tive performances of the sea-lions in the harbor was actively discussed. 

 One of the fishermen's representatives said that it was estimated that there 

 were 25,000 sea-lions within a radius of a few miles, consuming from ten to 

 forty pounds each of fish per day ; the sea-lions were protected while the 

 fishermen were harassed by the game laws. Another witness declared that 

 salmon captured in the Sacramento river often bore the marks of injury 

 from sea-lions, having barely escaped with life ; but it was supposed that 

 the salmon less frequently fell victims to the amphibian than did other 

 fishes that cannot swim as fast." Country, January 26, 1878.] 



