290 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



large masses the rocks and beaches hitherto unoccupied by seals of 

 any class this year. Now they are about five or six times their 

 original weight, or, in other words, they are thirty to forty pounds 

 avoirdupois, as plump and fat as butter-balls, and they begin to 

 take on their second coat, shedding their black pup-hair completely. 

 This second coat does not vary in color, at this age, between the 

 sexes. They effect such transformation in dress very slowly, and 

 cannot, as a rule, be said to have ceased their moulting until the 

 middle or 20th of October. 



That second coat, or sea-going jacket, of the pup, is a uniform, 

 dense, light gray over-hair, with an under-fur which is slightly gray- 

 ish in some, but is, in most cases, of a soft light brown hue. The over- 

 hair is fine, close and elastic, from two-thirds of an inch to an 

 inch in length, while the fur is not quite half an inch long. Thus 

 the coarser hair shingles over and conceals the soft under-wool 

 completely, giving the color by which, after the second year, the 

 sex of the animal is recognized. A pronounced difference between 

 the sexes is not effected, however, by color alone until the third 

 year of the animal's life. This over-hair of the pup's new jacket 

 on its back, neck, and head, is a dark chinchilla-gray, blending into 

 stone-white, just tinged with a grayish tint on the abdomen and 

 chest. The upper lip, upon which the whiskers or mustaches take 

 root, is covered with hair of a lighter gray than that of the body. 

 This mustache consists of fifteen or twenty longer or shorter 

 bristles, from half an inch to three inches in length, some brownish, 

 horn-colored, and others whitish-gray and translucent, on each side 

 and back and below the nostrils, leaving the muzzle quite promi- 

 nent and hairless. The nasal openings and their surroundings are, 

 as I have before said when speaking of this feature, hairless and 

 similar to those of a dog.* 



* It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent possessed 

 by these animals enables them to reach the breeding grounds at about the place 

 where they left them the season previously : surely the nose of the fur-seal is 

 endowed to a superlative degree with those organs of smell, and its range of 

 appreciation in this respect must be very great. 



I noticed in all sleeping and waking seals that the nasal apertures were 

 never widely expanded ; and that they were at intervals rapidly opened and 

 closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath ; the nostrils of the fur- 

 seal are, as a rule, well opened when the animal is out of water, and remain 

 so while it is on land. 



