HABITS. 353 



therefore, this causes them to fast, to abstain entirely from food 

 of any kind, or water, for three months at least, and a few of 

 them stay four months before going into the water for the first 

 time after hauling up in May. 



" This alone is remarkable enough, but it is simply wonderful 

 when we come to associate the condition with the unceasing 

 activity, restlessness, and duty devolved upon the bulls as 

 heads and fathers of large families. They do not stagnate, like 

 bears in caves ; it is evidently accomplished or due to the ab- 

 sorption of their own fat, with which they are so liberally sup- 

 plied when they take their positions on the breeding-ground, 

 and which gradually diminishes while they remain on it. But 

 still some most remarkable provision must be made for the en- 

 tire torpidity of the stomach and bowels, consequent upon their 

 being empty and unsupplied during this long period, which, 

 however, in spite of the violation of a supposed physiological 

 law, does not seem to affect them, for they come back just as 

 sleek, fat, and ambitious as ever in the following season. 



(i l have examined the stomachs of a number which were 

 driven up and killed immediately after their arrival in spring, 

 and natives here have seen hundreds, even thousands, of them 

 during the killing-season in June and July, but in no case has 

 anything been found other than the bile and ordinary secretions 

 of healthy organs of this class, with the exception only of find- 

 ing in every one a snarl or cluster of worms (Nematoda), from 

 the size of a walnut to that of one's fist, the fast apparently 

 having no effect on them, for when three or four hundred old 

 bulls were slaughtered late in the fall, to supply the natives 

 with 'bidarkee' or canoe skins, I found these worms in a lively 

 condition in every paunch cut open, and their presence, I 

 think, gives some reason for the habit which these old bulls 

 have of swallowing small bowlders, the stones in some of the 

 stomachs weighing half a pound or so, and in one paunch I 

 found about five pounds in the aggregate of larger pebbles, 

 which in grinding against one another must destroy, in a great 

 measure, these intestinal pests. The sea-lion is also troubled 

 in the same way by a similar species of worm, and I have pre- 

 served a stomach of one of these animals in which are more 

 than ten pounds of bowlders, some of them alone quite large. 

 The greater size of this animal enables it to swallow stones 

 which weigh two and three pounds. I can ascribe no other 

 cause for this habit among these animals than that given, as 

 Misc. Pub. No. 12 23 



