TIII: FTI: SI:AI. : K.VITI.K.S OF TIIK MAI.I-S. 79 



KELATIVK DURATION OP MIL: KKPRODUCTION is TKRHKSTRIAL. This tut ;<!*<> shows 

 ttiat. as the female Fur Seal is so conspicuously inferior to the male, physically viewed, as to size 

 and weight, so also is her life lessened. In other words, when she is matured, as she must IK- by 

 her third year, in hearing then her first pup, she can reasonably be exj>ected to live no longer than 

 nine or ten years, according to the general natural law governing this question; while the male, 

 not. coming to his maturity and physical prime until he is five or six years of age, lives, in obedicnee 

 to the same law. tit'teeu or twenty years. 



OLD AND YOUNG MALES FIGHTING. The males under six years of age, although hovering 

 alxmt the sea margins of the breeding-grounds, do not engage in much fighting there ; it is the six 

 and M-veii year old males, ambitious and flushed with their reproductive consciousness, that swarm 

 out and do battle with the older males of these places. The young male of this latter class is, 

 Imuever, no match for an old fifteen or twenty year old bull, provided that the aged " Seecatchie" 

 retains his teeth; tor, with these weapons, his relatively harder thews ami sinews give him the 

 advantage in almost every instance, among the hundreds of combats that I have witnessed. Tlie.-e 

 trials of strength between the old and the young are incessant until the rookeries are mapped out; 

 and by common consent the males of all classes recognize the coming of the females. After their 

 arrival and settlement over the whole extent of the breeding-grounds, about the 15th July at the 

 latest, very little fighting takes place. 1 



ONLY ONE PUP BORN AT TIME OF PARTURITION. Touching the number of young born at a 

 birth, the most diligent inquiry and scrutiny of observation on the rookeries have satisfied me that 

 it is confined to a single pup. If they have twins, 1 have failed to discover a single instance of 

 that character. I also failed to notice a malformed pup or a monster anywhere throughout the 

 multitudes under my observation, from July until the middle of November every season. I think 

 this somewhat noteworthy, as it presents, peihaps, better than any other exhibition in the animal 



'It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent possessed by these animals enables them to reach 

 the breeding-grounds at about the place where they left them the season previously ; surely the nose of the Fur Seal 

 is endowed to a superlative degree with those organs of smell, and its range of appreciation in this respect must be 

 very great. 



" In carnivorous quadrupeds the structure of the bones of the nassl cavities is more intricate thin iu the her- 

 bivorous, nnd is calculated to afford a far more extensive sr.rface for the distribution of the nerve. In the Real iliii 

 conformation is most fully developed and the bony platesarc here not turbinatcd, but ramified, as shown in tin- wo<xlrut. 

 Eight or more principal branches rise from the main trunk, and each of these is divided ami subdivided to mi extreme 

 decree of minuteness, so as to form in all many hundred plates. The olfactory membrane, with all its nerved, i- clow ly 

 applied to every plate in this vast assemblage, as well as to the main trunk and to the internal surface of the surrounding 

 cavity, so that its extent cannot be less than 120 square inches in each nostril. An organ of such exquisite sensibility 

 requires an extraordinary provision for securing it against injury, and nature has supplied a mechanism for the 

 purpose, enabling the animal to close at pleasure the orifice of the nostril." HARWOOO: Comp. Anat. and I'hysiol., 

 Bridgewaler Treatise, vol. ii, p. 402. 



I noticed in all sleeping and wakipg Seals that the nasal apertures were never widely expanded ; and that they 

 were ut intervals rapidly opened and closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath; the nostrils of the Fur 

 Seal are, as a rule, well opened when the animal is out of wafer, and remain so while it is on land. 



The distances at sea, away from the Prihylov Islands, in which Fur Seals are found during the breeding semon, 

 are very considi ruble : scattered records have been made of seeing large bands of them during August at far down the 

 northwest coast as they probably range at any season of the year, viz, well out at. sea in the latitude of Cape Flattery, 

 IT to 111 sou 111 hit it mle. In the winter anil spring, up to middle, of June, all classes are found here spread out over 

 wide arras ut' I lie oeeaii : then, by the l">th June they will have all departed, the first and the latest, en route for the 

 I'ribylov Islands. Then, when seen a^niu in this extreme southern range, I presume the unusually early examples of 

 return, toward the end of August, arc squads of the yearlings of both sexes, for this division is always the last to land 

 on, and (he first to Ieu\e, the Seal Islands, annually. Also, the two-year-old females which have been covered on the 

 breeding-grounds during Juno nnd .Inly undoubtedly .stray back to sea, and down again from tin- 1'rihylov gionp, very 

 early iu August, some of them as fur as the eoagt-lu-ads of Fuca Straits; at least, many of them at one time are never 

 -i -i-ii massed n I lie rookeries, and as they do not consort with the llolliisrhickie and yearlings on laud, quite number 

 <>t' tlieir large aggregate doubtless make frequent and extended ushing excursions during the height of the breeding 



