302 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



Great Eastern rookery, I have not been able to satisfy myself how 

 they used their long, flexible hindfeet, other than as steering media. 

 If these posterior members have any perceptible motion, it is so rapid 

 that my eye is not quick enough to catch it ; but the fore flippers, 

 however, can be most distinctly seen as they work in feathering for- 

 ward and sweeping flatly back, opposed to the water, with great ra- 

 pidity and energy. They are evidently the sole propulsive power 

 of the fur-seal in the water, as they are its main fulcrum and lever 

 combined for progression on land. I regret that the shy nature of 

 the hair-seal never allowed me to study its swimming motions, but 

 it seems to be a general point of agreement among authorities on 

 the Phocidce, that all motion in water by them arises from that power 

 which they exert and apply with the hindfeet. So far as my obser- 

 vations on the hair-seal go, I am inclined to agree with this opinion. 



All their movements in water, no matter whether travelling to 

 some objective point or merely in sport, are quick and joyous, and 

 nothing is more suggestive of intense satisfaction and pure phys- 

 ical comfort than is that spectacle which we can see every August 

 a short distance at sea from any rookery, where thousands of 

 old males and females are idly rolling over in the billows side by 

 side, rubbing and scratching with their fore and hind flippers, 

 which are here and there stuck up out of the water by their own- 

 ers, like so many lateen-sails of Mediterranean feluccas, or, when 

 their hind flippers are presented, like a "cat-o'-nine tails." They 

 sleep in the water a great deal, too, more than is generally supposed, 

 showing that they do not come ashore to rest very clearly not. 



How fast the fur-seal can swim, when doing its best, I am 

 naturally unable to state. I do know that a squad of young " hol- 

 luschickie " followed the Reliance, in which I was sailing, down 

 from the latitude of the Seal Islands to Akootan Pass with perfect 

 ease ; playing around the vessel while she was logging, straight 

 ahead, fourteen knots to the hour. 



When the " holluschickie " are up on land they can be readily 

 separated into their several classes, as to age, by the color of their 

 coats and size, when noted : thus, as yearlings, two, three, four, 

 and five years old males. When the yearlings, or the first class, 

 haul out, they are dressed just as they were after they shed their 

 pup-coats and took on the second covering, during the previous 

 year in September and October ; and now, as they come out in 

 the spring and summer, one year old, the males and females can- 



