306 ZALOPHUS CALIFORNIANUS CALIFORNIAN SEA LION. 



been since they left their home I am unable to say, but I am 

 inclined to suspect it was often like a midshipman's half-pay, 

 'nothing a-day,' and as they had no means of 'finding them- 

 selves,' they probably had many a ' banyan day ' whilst on their 

 way to Europe. Fortunately their capability of fasting is very^ 

 great. Mr. Woodward, the proprietor of ' Woodward's Gar- 

 dens,' San Francisco, with whom I have recently had the i)leas- 

 ure of becoming acquainted, tells me that in numerous instances 

 he has received sea-lions which have not eaten a morsel dur- 

 ing a whole month, and aj)peared to suffer little inconvenience 

 in consequence. Fearing, however, that it would tell injuriously 

 upon the health of one which persisted longer than usual in 

 total abstinence, he had the beast lassoed and held fast whilst 

 food was forced into its stomach down an india-rubber hose- 

 pipe. As the males are believed to take no sustenance for three 

 or four months together during the breetling-season, this was 

 probably unnecessary. We had no trouble of this kind with 

 ours. They ate with appetite immediately, and although when 

 they arrived they looked like the omnibus horses in Punchy 

 which, as their driver informed an outside passenger, had been 

 fed on butter-tubs, and showed the hoops, 'nous avons change tout 

 cela.^ Nearly half-a-hundred weight of fish a day for the last six- 

 teen weeks has been gradually converted into sea-lion flesh and 

 blubber, and the result is apparent in the greatly increased size 

 and weight of these valuable animals. Herrings and sprats 

 are the food which they like best, and which we prefer to give 

 them, both because they are very nutritious, and because, as 

 they are netted fish, there is no fear of their containing hooks. 

 When herrings cannot be obtained, whiting are generally sub- 

 stituted ; but these have to be opened, one by one, and care- 

 fully searched for fish-hooks which may have been left in them ; 

 for it may be remembered that the first Otaria possessed by the 

 Zoological Society died in great pain, in 1867, from having swal- 

 lowed a hook which had escaped discovery among its food. 

 As these animals do not masticate, they are, of course, unable 

 to detect and reject from the mouth any foreign substances con- 

 cealed within the body of a fish When one of the 



sea-lions takes a fish from his keeper, the head is no sooner inside 

 its mouth than the tail disappears after it, before one can say 

 the proverbial ' Jack Robinson '. There is not a moment's pause 

 for deglutition ; one after another the fish, whole and unbitten, 

 disappear from sight as instantaneously as so many letters 



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