AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 341 



his work over it, and a sweeping circular incision is made through 

 the skin on them just at the point where the body-fur ends ; then, 

 seizing a flap of the hide on either one side or the other of the 

 abdomen, the man proceeds with his smaller, shorter butcher-knife, 



men are bitten every day or two during the season on the islands, in this man- 

 ner, but I have never learned of any serious result following any case. 



The sealers, as might be expected, become exceedingly expert in keeping 

 their knives sharp, putting edges on them as keen as razors, and in an instant 

 detect any dulness by passing the balls of their thumbs over the suspected 

 edges to such blades. 



The white sealers of the Antarctic always used an orthodox butcher's 

 11 steel" in sharpening their knives, but these natives never have, and prob- 

 ably never will abandon those little whetstones above referred to. 



During the Russian management, and throughout the strife in killing by 

 our own people in 1868, a very large number of the skins were cut through, 

 here and there, by the slipping of the natives' knives, when they were taking 

 them from the carcasses, and "flensing" them from the superabundance, in 

 spots, of blubber. These knife-cuts through the skin, no matter how slight, 

 give great annoyance to the dresser, hence they are always marked down in 

 price. The prompt scrutiny of each skin on the islands by an agent of the 

 Alaska Commercial Company, who rejects every one of them thus injured, has 

 caused the natives to exercise greater care, and the number now so damaged, 

 every season, is absolutely trifling. 



Another source of small loss is due to a habit which the " holluschickie " 

 have of occasionally biting each other when they are being urged along in 

 the drives, and thus crowded once in a while one upon the other. Usually 

 these examples of "zoobaden" are detected by the natives prior to the 

 "knocking down," and spared; yet those which have been nipped on the 

 chest or abdomen cannot be thus noticed, and, until the skin is lifted, the 

 damage is not apprehended. 



The aim and force with which the native directs his blow determines the 

 death of a fur-seal. If struck direct and violently, a single stroke is enough. 

 The seals' heads are stricken so hard sometimes that those crystalline lenses to 

 their eyes fly out from the orbital sockets like hail-stones, or little pebbles, and 

 frequently struck me sharply in the face, or elsewhere, while I stood near by 

 watching a killing-gang at work. 



A singular lurid green light suddenly suffuses the eye of a fur-seal at 

 intervals when it is very much excited ; as the "podding" for the clubbers 

 is in progress and at the moment when last raising its head it sees the uplifted 

 bludgeons on every hand above, fear seems then for the first time to possess it 

 and to instantly gild its eye in this strange manner. When the seal is brained 

 in this state of optical coloration I have noticed that the opalescent tinting re- 

 mained well defined for many hours or a whole day after death. These re- 

 markable flashes are very characteristic to the eyes of the old males during 

 their hurly-burly on the rookeries, but never appear in the younger classes 

 unless as just described, as far as I could observe. 



