Till- IIAM1TS OF TIIF. FUK SEAL. 75 



C. THE HABITS OF THE FUR SEAL. 



By HENRY W. ELLIOTT. 

 30. LIFE-HISTORY OF THE FUR SEAL. 



DESCRIPTION OP AN ADULT MAM:. The Fur Seal, which repairs every year to the Pribylov 



Islands to breed and to shed its hair and fur, in numbers that seem almost fabulous, is the highest 

 organized of all the /'i/iniperfia, and, indeed, for that matter, when laud and water are weighed in 

 tin- jr. mini together, there is no other animal known to man which can be truly, as it is, classed 

 superior, from a purely physical point of view. Certainly there are few, if any, creatures in 

 the animal kingdom that can be said to exhibit a higher order of instinct, approaching even our 

 intelligence. 



1 wish to draw attention to a s|tecimen of the finest of this race a male in the Hush and prime 

 of his tirst maturity, six or seven years old, and full grown. When it comes up from the sea early 

 in the spring, out to its station for the breeding season, we have an animal before us that will 

 measure six and a half to seven and u quarter feet in length from tip of nose to the end of its 

 abbreviated, abortive tail. It will weigh at least 400 pounds, and I have seen older specimens 

 much more corpulent, which, in my best judgment, could not be less than (5<H pounds in weight. 

 The head of this animal now before us, appears to be disproportionately small in compHrison with 

 the immense thick neck and shoulders; but as we come to examine it we will llnd it is mostly all 

 occupied by the brain. The light frame- work of the skull supports an expressive pair of large 

 bluish hazel eyes; alternately burning with revengeful, passionate, light, then suddenly changing 

 to the tones of tenderness and good nature. It has a muzzle and jaws of about the same size and 

 form observed in any full blooded Newfoundland dog, with this difference, that the lips re not 

 flabby and overhanging; they are as firmly lined and pressed against one another as our own. The 

 upper lips support a yellowish white and gray moustache, composed of long, stiff' bristles, and when 

 it is not torn out and broken oft' in combat, it sweeps down and over the shoulders as a luxuriant 

 plume. Look at it as it comes leisurely swimming on tow aid the land; see how high al>ove the 

 water it carries its head, an I how deliberately it surveys the beach, after having stepjed upon it 

 (for it may lie truly said to step with its fore-flippers, as they regularly alternate when it moves 

 up), carrying the head well above, them, erect and graceful, at least three feet from the ground. 

 The fore-feet, or flippers, are a pair of dark bluish-black hands, about eight or ten inches broad at 

 their junction with the body, and the metacarpal joint, running out to an ovate point at their 

 extremity, some fifteen to eighteen inches from this union; all the rest of the forearm, the ulna, 

 radius, and humerus being concealed under the skin and thick blubber-folds of the main body and 

 necU. hidden entirely at this season, when it is so fat. Hut six weeks to three months after this 

 tune of landing, when that supertliioiis fat and flesh lias been consumed by self-absorption, those 

 bones show plainly under the shrunken skin. On the upper side of these tlip|>crs the hair of tin- 

 body straggles down liner and fainter as it comes below to a point close by, and slightly beyond 

 that spot of junction where the phalanges and the metacarpal bones unite, similar to that point on 

 onr own hand where our knuckles are placed; and here the hair ends, leaving the rest of the skin 

 to the end of the Hipper bare and wrinkled in places at the margin <pf the inner .side; showing, also, 

 line small pits, containing abortive nails, which are situated immcdiatch over the union of the 

 phalange* with their cartilaginous continuations to the end of the Hipper. 



