AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 281 



I have always found their sleep to be of this nervous description. 

 The respiration is short and rapid, but with no breathing (unless 

 the ear is brought very close). The quivering, heaving of the 

 flanks only indicates the action of the lungs. I have frequently 

 thought that I had succeeded in finding a snoring seal, especially 

 among the pups ; but a close examination always gave some abnor- 

 mal reason for it generally a slight distemper ; never anything 

 more severe, however, than some trifle by which the nostrils were 

 stopped to a greater or less degree. 



The cows on the rookeries sleep a great deal, but the bulls 

 have the veriest cat-naps that can be imagined. I never could time 

 the slumber of any old male on the breeding grounds, which lasted, 

 without interruption, longer than five minutes, day or night. While 

 away from these places, however, I have known them to lie sleeping 

 in the manner I have described, broken by such fitful, nervous, 

 dreamy starts, yet without opening the eyes, for an hour or so at a 

 time. 



With an exception of the pups, the fur-seal seems to have very 

 little rest, awake or sleeping. Perpetual motion is well-nigh in- 

 carnate with its being. I naturally enough, when beginning my 

 investigation of these seal-rookeries, expected to find the animals 

 subdued at night, or early morning, on those breeding grounds ; but 

 a few consecutive nocturnal watches satisfied me that the family or- 

 ganization and noise was as active at one time as at another, 

 throughout the whole twenty-four hours. If, however, the day 

 preceding had chanced to be abnormally warm, I never failed then 

 to find the rookeries much more noisy and active during the night 

 than they were by daylight. The seals, as a rule, come and go to 

 and from the sea, fight, roar, and vocalize as much during mid- 

 night moments as they do at noonday times. An aged native en- 

 deavored to satisfy me that the " seecatchie " could see much better 

 by twilight and night than by daylight I am not prepared to 

 prove to the contrary, but I think that the fact of his not being able 

 to see so well himself at that hour of darkness was a true cause 

 of most of his belief in the improved nocturnal vision of the seals.* 



* This old Aleut, Philip Vollkov, passed to his final rest" un konchiel- 

 sah" in the winter of 1878-79. He was one of the real characters of 

 St. Paul. He was esteemed by the whites on account of his relative intelli- 

 gence, and beloved by the natives, who called him their " wise man,' and 

 who exulted in his piety. Philip, like the other people there of his kind, 



