56 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



band of seals evidently represents the animals preparing to depart and those just 

 arriving. No one ever sees a seal landing directly from the sea; -and one seldom sees 

 a seal leave the rookery to go directly out to sea, though at a distance from land, as 

 on onr trips to Otter Island, numbers of the animals were seen going rapidly out to sea 

 and coming in in the same direct manner. The incoming seal doubtless quietly 

 joins the outer edge of the group of swimming seals, becoming one of them in their 

 motions and pastimes, gradually working to the shore when ready to go on the rookery. 

 The departing seal, in like manner, evidently takes its place among the swimming 

 seals and when ready slips away from them on the outer side. 



The tendency on the part of the seal on first going into the water to loiter and 

 enjoy a bath accounts for the delay of the departing seals; but in case of the arriving 

 seal something more definite must keep the tired animal, eager for her hungry pup, 

 from landing at once. The reason for this seems to lie in the feeding habits of the 

 animals. The bachelors, as has long been noted, are never found with food in their 

 stomachs, whether taken on first landing in the spring or later in the season. It has 

 been erroneously supposed on this account that they fasted more or less throughout 

 the season. In the summer of 1890, however, a large number of cows were either 

 directly killed or examined after accidental death and their stomachs also found to 

 be devoid of food. Even the stomach of a cow dead from choking on a fish bone was 

 empty. The cows are, of course, absolutely known to feed. 



THE SEAL DIGESTS ITS FOOD IN THE WATER. 



It seems necessary, therefore, to find some more rational explanation for the 

 absence of food in the stomachs of animals taken on land. This explanation seems 

 to be that digestion with the fur seal is completed in the water, and that if not so 

 completed before it reaches laud, the animal loiters offshore until it is accomplished. 

 This explanation accounts for the empty stomachs of bachelors as well as cows. It 

 also explains the reason why the cows do not come directly on shore from the sea. 

 The fact that digestion is thus accomplished at sea also accounts for the relatively 

 small amount of excrement to be seen on the rookeries compared with the number of 

 animals. It is voided at sea. 



THE EVIDENCE OF THE PUPS. 



In the investigations regarding the feeding of pups carried on during the fall of 

 1896 some additional light was thrown on this subject. Where the animals were 

 killed while swimming or sleeping in the water, they were found almost without excep- 

 tion to be well filled with milk. Where they were killed on the rookeries, they were 

 as a rule empty or had little milk. The conclusion seems warranted that the little 

 fellows, after learning to swim well, spend most of their time in the water after feeding 

 and come on shore when hungry to await the return of their mothers. That their 

 presence in the water was connected with the digestion of their food was borne out by 

 the fact that in October, when hundreds of pups were playing and sleeping just off- 

 shore from the sand beaches of Zoltoi, Lukanin, and English Bay, the sands were 

 strewn with pup excrement washed up by the receding tide, together with the shells 

 and pebbles. 



