AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 291 



The most attractive feature about the fur-seal pup, and that which 

 holds this place as it grows on and older, is the eye. That organ is 

 exceedingly clear, dark, and liquid, with which, for beauty and ami- 

 ability, together with real intelligence of expression, those of no 

 other animal that I have ever seen, or have ever read of, can be 

 compared ; indeed, there are few eyes in the orbits of men and 

 women which suggest more pleasantly the ancient thought of their 

 being "windows to the soul." The lids to that eye are fringed with 

 long, perfect lashes, and the slightest irritation in the way of dust 

 or sand, or other foreign substances, seems to cause them exquisite 

 annoyance, accompanied by immoderate weeping. This involuntary 

 tearfulness so moved Steller that he ascribed it to the processes of 

 a mind, and declared that seal- mothers actually " shed tears " ! 



I do not think a seal's range of vision on land, or out of the 

 water, is very great. I have frequently experimented with adult 

 fur-seals, by allowing them to catch sight of my person, so as to 

 distinguish it as of foreign character, three and four hundred paces 

 off, taking the precaution of standing quietly to the leeward when 

 the wind was blowing strong, and then walking unconcernedly up 

 to them. I have invariably noticed that they would allow me to ap- 

 proach quite close before recognizing my strangeness ; then, as it 

 occurred to them, they at once made a lively noise, a medley of 

 coughing, spitting, snorting, and blaating, and plunged in spasmodic 

 lopes and shambled to get away from my immediate neighborhood. 

 As to the pups, they all stupidly stare at the form of a human being 

 until it is fairly on them, when they also repeat in miniature these 

 vocal gymnastics and physical efforts of the older ones, to retreat 

 or withdraw a few rods, sometimes only a few feet, from the spot 

 upon which you have cornered them, after which they instantly re- 

 sume their previous occupation of either sleeping or playing, as 

 though nothing had happened. Perhaps it is safe to say that the 

 greatest activity displayed by any one of the five senses of the seal 

 is evidenced in its power of scent. This faculty is all that can be 

 desired in the line of alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult 

 seal from the soundest sleep, when from a half to a quarter of a 

 mile distant, no matter how softly I proceeded, if I got to the 

 windward, though they sometimes took alarm when I was a mile 

 off. 



They leave evidences of their being on these great reproductive 

 fields, chiefly at the rookeries, in the hundreds of dead carcasses 



