116 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



Bryant says of the fur-seal " On landing, the mother 

 calls out to her young with a plaintive bleat like that of 

 a sheep calling to her lamb. As she approaches the mass 

 several of the young ones answer and start to meet her 

 responding to her call as a young lamb answers its 

 parent. As she meets them she looks at them, touches 

 them with her nose as if smelling them, and passes hur- 

 riedly on until she meets her own, which she at once 

 recognises." This description, though of a different species 

 is, I believe and hope truer than the other. 



When they are a little older the young fur seals seern 

 to be very playful, sporting and frolicking with each other 

 like young puppies, and when weary of this gamboling, 

 dropping off to sleep in all sorts of odd attitudes. Their 

 sleep is short and they are soon frolicking and loping 

 about again, and this they continue for hours without 

 cessation ; or perhaps they struggle for and clamber on to 

 some favourite point of rock, pushing one another off and 

 struggling good-humouredly for the mastery, fairly brimful 

 and overrunning with warm life. 



Fur seals are, if the weather be at all hot, dreadfully 

 oppressed with their own warm natural fur cloaks. 

 Nature, however, who has given them the fur, has given 

 them also a fan to counteract the effects of the heat 

 And an old lady seal who has made herself warm with 

 too much flopping, hitching and wobbling, will lie down 

 on her side or back and fan herself into a state of content- 

 ment with her hind flippers. 



And now let us learn how these curious creatures are 

 hunted for their skin, and for their blubber. The skins 

 of the true seals those without ears and with the hind- 

 limbs helpless on land and of the sea-lions are of com- 

 paratively little value. The sealskins that ladies wear 

 are obtained from the fur seals (sea-bears they are some- 



