VIIL SEALS AND SEA-LIONS. 115 



especially bull number two, and have a tremendous fight, 

 during which somebody else carries off the unfortunate 

 cow seal and removes her further inland to his own 

 quarters. Thus do matters proceed until by a process 

 of all-round robbery the cows are pretty well distributed 

 through the rookery. " Some of the bulls," says Mr. 

 Elliott, from whom my description is mainly taken, "show 

 wonderful strength and courage. I marked one veteran, 

 who was among the first to take up his position on the 

 water-line, where at least fifty or sixty desperate battles 

 were fought victoriously by him with as many different 

 seals who coveted his position." 



The extraordinary thing is that they are able to carry 

 on all this strange courtship and sanguinary battling 

 during an uninterrupted fast of three months or more. 

 No wonder that they return to the sea mere torn and 

 tattered bags of bones, weighing about half what they 

 did when they " hauled up " sleek and plump three 

 months before. That the bear and other creatures that 

 hibernate can exist for months without food is sufficiently 

 wonderful ; but such continued fast during the suspended 

 animation of winter sleep is far less extraordinary than 

 the long abstinence of the sea-lion at a time when his 

 energies are strained to the utmost. 



The little seal-pups are born while the seals are on the 

 land, and then the rookery soon begins to break up and 

 lose its compactness. Speaking of the Californian sea- 

 lion, Mr. J. R. Browne says that he could not discover 

 any individual claim set up by the mother for any par- 

 ticular little lion ; maternal love seemed he says " to be 

 joint-stock property, and each infant communist had a 

 mother in every adult female." This is so surprising that 

 I cannot but think that the statement is the result of 

 erroneous observation. This at any rate is what Captain 



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