CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 6. PINNIPEDIA. 331 



is furnished. These seals — though living mainly in salt water — are fond of wallowing in fresh- 

 water swamps, and resort to lakes and rivers connected with the sea, whose waters they drink 

 with apparent pleasure. They sleep both afloat and on the sands of the shore : when a flock re- 

 poses in the latter situation, some of them keep watch, and if alarmed, down they go to the sea. 

 Those who have seen them in progress describe their gait as very singular, their motion being a 

 kind of crawling, during which their body trembles like a great bag of jelly. At every fifteen or 

 twenty paces they halt, as if from fatigue. If any one gets before them, they stop, and if urged 

 to motion by repeated blows, appear to suffer much, and the pupil of the eye, which is ordinarily 

 bluish-green, becomes blood-red. Notwithstanding their unwieldiness, however, they have been 

 known to ascend low downs of fifteen or twenty feet elevation, in order to reach small ponds of 

 water. 



The cry of the female and of the young is said to resemble the lowing of an ox, but the hoarse, 

 gurgling, singular voice of the male, strengthened by the proboscis, is described as being audible 

 to a great distance, and as wild and frightful. To obtain shelter from the heat of the sun, when 

 lying on the shore by day, they cover themselves, by the aid of their paws, with the moist sand. 

 They perform a sort of migration by sea in order to avoid the extremes of heat and cold, leaving 

 the south in the beginning of winter for more temperate climes, and retiring southward again in 

 summer. About a month afterward, the females bring forth one, very rarely two, according to 

 Peron; generally two, according to Anson. The young weigh about seventy pounds, and are 

 between four and five feet long at their birth, the male, even at that early period, being larger 

 than the female. At this time, it is stated that the mothers are all collected near the shore, sur- 

 rounded by the males, who prevent them from returning to sea till the period of suckling is past, 

 during which operation the female lies on her side. The young grow so rapidly that they are 

 said to double their original dimensions in eight days, and at the end of the third year they have 

 attained a length of from eighteen to twenty-five feet and upwards, when they increase princi- 

 pally in fatness. At this period the proboscis appears in the male. Six or seven weeks elapse 

 before the young are conducted to sea, to familiarize them with which the whole troop abandon 

 the shore, swimming about for three weeks or more, when they return to the coasts for the pur- 

 pose of breeding. The young males stay with the females till their proboscis is developed, an- 

 nouncing that they have arrived at maturity. During the breeding season, bloody battles take 

 place among the males, in which they are often severely wounded, but rarely killed, while the fe- 

 males calmly wait the issue, and receive the conqueror. The period of gestation is said to be 

 nine or ten months. 



They are a harmless race, never attacking man unless in defense of themselves and their young. 

 One of Anson's sailors lost his life by exasperating a mother, in whose presence he skinned her 

 young one. Their disposition is, however, gentle and affectionate; and a young one, petted by 

 an English seaman, became so attached to his master from kind treatment for a few months, that 

 it would come at his call, allow him to mount upon its back and put his hands into its mouth. 

 Their length of life is estimated at twenty-five »r thirty years. 



Their tongues, when salted, are considered savory and wholesome; the flesh, according to some, 

 is black, oily, and indigestible; others represent it as palatable and nutritious. The heart, though 

 tough and hard, is sometimes eaten, but the liver appears to be unwholesome. The skin, though 

 not valued for its fur, is extensively used for carriage and horse harness, on account of its thick- 

 ness and strength. But the oil is the great object for which the animal is hunted. 



Genus ARCTOCEPH ALUS : Ar otocephalus. — Of this, one of the most noted species is the 

 Sea-Bear, A. ursinus: the Ours Marin of Buffon; the Ursine Seal of various authors. It is 

 the size of a large bear; girth at the shoulder, five feet, near the tail, twenty inches; fur brown, 

 acquiring a grayish tint at the point of the hairs in old age; external ears one inch eiglit lines 

 long, conical, erect, covered with short hair, and opening by an oblong slit, which is shut in the 

 water; nails very slender and minute; length seven and a half feet. It*is found on the islands 

 at the northwest point of America, at Kamtschatka, and the Kurile Islands. 



~V\ hen these migratory seals appear off Kamtschatka and the Kuriles, early in the spring, they 

 are in high condition, and the females are pregnant. They remain on or about the shore for two 



