SEAL LIFE ON THE PKIBILOF ISLANDS. 137 



reason they have selected these lonely and barren islands as the choicest 

 spots of earth upon which to assemble and dwell together during their 

 six months' stay on land; and annually they journey across thousands 

 of miles of ocean and pass hundreds of islands, without pause or rest, 

 until they come to the place of their birth. And it is a well-established 

 fact that upon no other land in the world do the Alaskan fur seal haul 

 out of water. 



Early in May the bulls approach the islands and, after cautiously and 

 carefully reconnoitering the surroundings, haul out and select their 

 situations on the rookeries, where they patiently await the coming of 

 the cows. When they lirst appear upon the rookeries the bulls are fat 

 and sleek and very aggressive, but after a stay of from three to four 

 months, without food, they crawl away from the rookeries in a very 

 lean condition. In my opinion the bull seal returns to the spot he 

 occupied the preceding years, and I know of several instances, where 

 he could be distinguished by the loss of an eye or a flipper, in which 

 he actually did return for a series of years to the same spot. 



The mother seals or cows commence to haul about June 10, and nearly 

 all of them are on the rookeries by July 15, and 1 believe they bring 

 forth their young almost immediately after reaching their places on the 

 rookeries. When the pup is from four to six days old the mother goes 

 into the water for food and, as time passes, her stay becomes longer, 

 until finally she will be away from her pup for several days at a time, 

 and sometimes for a whole week. During these longer migrations she 

 often goes 200 miles from the rookery, and 1 have been informed by men 

 who were engaged in the trade of pelagic hunting that they had taken 

 " mothers in milk" at a distance of 200 miles from the seal islands. 



No cow will nurse any pup but her own, and I have often watched 

 the pups attempt to suck cows, but they were always driven off; and 

 this fact convinces me that the cow recognizes her own pup and that 

 the pup does not know its dam. At birth and for several weeks after, 

 the pup is utterly helpless and entirely dependent on its dam for sus- 

 tenance; and should anything prevent her return during this period it 

 dies on the rookery. This has been demonstrated beyond a doubt since 

 the sealing vessels have operated largely in Bering Sea during the 

 months of July, August, and September, and which, killing the cows 

 at the feeding grounds, left the pups to die on the islands. 



At about o weeks old the pups begin to run about and congregate in 

 bunches or " pods," and at 6 to 8 weeks old they go into the shallow 

 water and gradually learn to swim. 



They are not amphibious when born, nor can they swim for several 

 weeks thereafter, and were they put into the water would perish 

 beyond a doubt, as has been well established by the drowning of pups 

 caught by the surf in stormy weather. After learning to swim the 

 pups still draw their sustenance from the cows, and I have noticed at 

 the annual killing of pups for food in November that their stomachs 

 were always full of milk, and nothing else, although the cows had left 

 the island some days before. 1 have no knowledge of the pups obtain- 

 ing sustenance of any kind except that furnished by the cows; nor have 

 I ever seen anything but milk in a dead pup's stomach. The young 

 males from 2 to 5 years old, whose skins are taken by the lessees, begin 

 to haul out on land in May, and they continue to haul out till July. 

 They herd by themselves during the months of May, June, and July, 

 and they do this because, during the breeding season, they dare not 

 approach the breeding rookeries, or the bulls would destroy them. 

 Being thus debarred from a position on the breeding rookeries or from 



