AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 331 



extent, upon crustaceans and upon the squid (Loligo), also eating 

 tender algoid sprouts ; I believe that the pup-seals live for the first 

 five or six months at sea largely, if not wholly, upon crustaceans 

 and squids ; they are not agile enough, in my opinion, to fish suc- 

 cessfully, in any great degree, when they first depart from the 

 rookeries. 



In this connection I wish to record an impression very strongly 

 made upon my mind, in regard to their diverse behavior when 

 out at sea away from the islands, and when congregated thereon. 

 As I have plainly exhibited in the foregoing, they are practically 

 without fear of man when he visits them on the land of their birth 

 and recreation ; but the same seal that noticed you with quiet in- 

 difference at St. Paul, in June and July, and the rest of the season 

 while he was there, or gambolled around your boat when you rowed 

 from the ship to shore, as a dog will play about your horses when 

 you drive from the gate to the house, that same seal, when you 

 meet him in one of the passes of the Aleutian chain, one hundred 

 or two hundred miles away from here, as the case may be, or to the 

 southward of that archipelago, is the shyest and wariest creature 

 your ingenuity can define. Happy are you in getting but a single 

 glimpse of him, first ; you will never see him after, until he hauls 

 out, and winks and blinks across Lukannon sands. 



But the companionship and the exceeding number of the seals, 

 when assembled together annually, makes them bold ; largely due, 

 perhaps, to their fine instinctive understanding, dating, probably, 

 back many years, seeming to know that man, after all, is not wan- 

 tonly destroying them ; and what he takes, he only takes from the 

 ravenous maw of the killer-whale or the saw-tipped teeth of the 

 Japan shark. As they sleep in the water, off the Straits of Fuca, 

 and the northwest coast as far as Dixon's Sound, the Indians be- 

 longing to that region surprise them with spears and rifle, captur- 

 ing quite a number every year, chiefly pups and yearlings. 



When fur-seals were noticed, by myself, far away from these 

 islands, at sea, I observed that then they were as shy and as wary 

 as the most timorous animal would be, in dreading man's prox- 

 imity sinking instantly on apprehending the approach or pres- 

 ence of the ship, seldom to reappear to my gaze. But, when 

 gathered in such immense numbers at the Pribylov Islands, they 

 are suddenly metamorphosed into creatures wholly indifferent to 

 my person. It must cause a very curious sentiment in the mind of 



