302 ZALOPHUS CALIFORNIANUS CALIFORNIAN SEA LION. 



wing, seeing the object near by, alights to catch it, while the 

 Sea Lion at the same moment settles beneath the waves, and 

 at one bound, with extended jaws, seizes its screaming prey, 

 and instantly devours it.[*] 



" A few years ago great numbers of Sea Lions were taken 

 along the coast of Upper and Lower California, and thousands 

 of barrels of oil obtained. The number of Seals slain exclu- 

 sively for their oil would appear fabulous, when we realize the 

 fact that it requires on an average, throughout the season, the 

 blubber of three or four Sea Lions to produce a barrel of oil. 

 Their thick, coarse-grained skins were not considered worth 

 preparing for market, in a country where manual labor was so 

 highly valued. At the present time, however, they are valued 

 for glue-stock, and the seal-hunters now realize more compara- 

 tive profit from the hides than from the oil. But while the 

 civilized sealers, plying their vocation along the seaboard of 

 California and Mexico, destroy the Lobo marino, for the product 

 of its oil, skin, testes, and whiskers, the simple Aleutians of 

 the Alaska region derive from these animals many of their in- 

 dispensable articles of domestic use " t 



To Captain Scamnion's graphic account I add a few lines from 

 the pen of a non-scientific writer respecting the Sea Lions of 

 the Farallones: "The Sea Lions, which congregate by thou- 

 sands upon the cliffs, and bark and howl and shriek and roar 

 in the caves and upon the steep sunny slopes, are but little dis- 

 turbed, and one can easily approach them within twenty or 

 thirty yards. It is an extraordinarily interesting sight to see 

 these marine monsters, many of them bigger than an ox, at 

 play in the surf, and to watch the superb skill with which they 

 know how to control their own motions when a huge wave 

 seizes them, and seems likely to dash them to pieces against 

 the rocks. They love to lie in the sun upon the bare and warm 

 rocks ; and here they sleep, crowded together, and lying upon 

 each other in inextricable confusion. The bigger the animal 

 the greater his ambition appears to be to climb to the highest 

 summit ; and when a huge, slimy beast has with infinite squirm- 

 ing attained a solitary peak, he does not tire of raising his 



[* This account appeared originally in Captain Scammon's account of the 

 " Islands off the West coast of Lower California," in J. Ross Browne's "Re- 

 sources of the Pacific Slope," second part, p. 130 (1869), and has been quoted 

 "by Mr. Gurney in the "Zoologist" for 1871, p. 2762.] 



t Marine Mammalia, pp. 130-135. 



