148 ALASKA. 



to part it with the fingers, as to sbow the bide from wliicb it 

 has grown ; theu take a " stagey" skin, by the end of August 

 and earl}' iu September, wheu all the over-hair is present, about 

 one-third to one-half groicn, and the first puff you expeud upon 

 it easily shows the hide below, sometimes quite a broad welt. 

 This under-fur, or pelage, is so fine and delicate, and so much 

 concealed and shaded by the course over-hair, that a careless 

 eye may be pardoned for any such blunder, but only a very 

 casual observer could make it. 



The yearling cows retain the colors of the old coat in the new^ 

 and from this time on shed, year after year, just so, for the 

 young and the old cows look alike, as far as color goes, when 

 they haul up on the rookeries in the summer. 



The yearling males, however, make a radical change, coming 

 out from their " staginess" in a uniform dark-gray and gray- 

 black mixed and lighter, and dark ocher, on the under and up- 

 per parts, respectively. This coat, next year, when they come 

 np on the hauling-grounds, is very dark, and is so for the third, 

 fourth, and fifth years, when, after tbis, they begin to grow 

 more gray and brown, year by year, w ith rufous-ocher and 

 whitish-gray tipped over-hair on the shoulders. Some of the 

 very old bulls become changed to uniform dull grayish-ocher 

 all over. 



The female does not get her full growth and weight until the 

 end of her fourth year, so far as 1 have observed, but does the 

 most of her growing in the first two. 



The male does not get his full growth and -weight until the 

 close of his seventh year, but realizes most of it by the end of 

 the fifth, osteologically, and from tbis it may be, perhaps, truly 

 inferi'ed tbat tbe bulls live to an average age of eighteen or 

 twenty years, if undisturbed in a normal condition, and tbat the 

 cows attain ten or twelve under tbe same circumstances. Tbeir 

 respective weights, when fully mature and fat in the spring, 

 will, I tbink, strike an average of four to five hundred pounds 

 for the male and from seventy to eighty for the female. 



From the fact tbat all the young seals do not change much in 

 weight, from tbe time of their first coming out in tbe spring 

 till tbat of tbeir leaving in the fall and early winter, I feel safe 

 in saying, since they, too, are constantly changing from land to 

 water and from water to land, that they feed at irregular but 

 not long intervals during tbe time they are here under observa- 

 tion, I do not tbink tbe young males fast longer than a week 

 or ten days at a time, as a class. 



