90 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



ence is also exhibited by the male to all that may take place of this character outside of the 

 boundary of his seraglio; but the moment the pups are inside the limits of his harem-ground, he is 

 a jealous and a fearless protector, vigilant and determined; but if tV-e little animals are careless 

 enough to pass beyond this boundary, then I can go up to them and carry them off before the eye 

 of the old Turk without receiving from him the slightest attention iu their behalf a curious 

 guardian, forsooth! 



It is surprising to me how few of these young pups get crushed to death while the ponderous 

 males are floundering over them, engaged in lighting and quarreling among themselves. I have 

 seen two bulls dash at each other with all the energy of furious rage, meeting right iu the midst of 

 a small "pod" of forty or fifty pups, tramp over them with all their crushing weight, and bowling 

 them out right and left in every direction by the impetus of their movements, without injuring a 

 single one, as far as I could see. Still, when wo come to consider the fact that, despite the great 

 weight of the old males, their broad, flat flippers and yielding bodies may press down heavily on 

 these little fellows without actually breaking bones or mashing them out of shape, it seems 

 questionable whether more thau one per cent, of all the pups born each season on these great 

 rookeries of the Pribylov Islands are destroyed in this manner on the breeding-grounds. 1 



The vitality of the Fur Seal is simply astonishing. His physical organization passes beyond 

 the fabled nine lives of the cat. As a slight illustration of his tenure of life, I will mention the 

 i'act, that one morning the chief came to me with a pup in his arms, which had just been born, and 

 was still womb-moist, saying that the mother had been killed at Tolstoi by accident, and he sup- 

 pose! that I would like to have a "choochil." 2 I took it up into my laboratory, and finding that 

 it could walk about and make a great noise, I attempted to feed it, with the idea of having a 

 comfortable subject to my pencil, for life-study of the young in the varied attitudes of sleep and 

 motion. It refused everything that I could summon to its attention as food; and, alternately 

 sleeping and walking, iu its clumsy fashion, about the floor, it actually lived nine days spending 

 the halt of every day in floundering over the floor, accompanying all movement with a persistent, 

 hoarse, blaating cry and I do not believe it ever had a single drop of its mother's milk. 



In the pup, the head is the only disproportionate feature at birth, when it is compared with 

 the adult form; the neck being also relatively shorter and thicker. The eye is large, round, and 

 full, but almost a "navy blue" at times, it soon changes into the blue black of adolescence. 



The females appear to go to and come from the water to feed and bathe, quite frequently, after 

 bearing their young, and the immediate subsequent coitus with the male; and usually return to 

 the spot or its immediate neighborhood, where they leave their pups, crying out for them, and 

 recogniy.ing the individual replies, though ten thousand around, all together, should bloat at once. 

 They quickly single out their own and nurse them. It would certainly be a very unfortunate matter 

 if the mothers could not identify their young by sound, since their pups get together like a great 

 swarm of bees, and spread out, upon the ground in what the sealers call " pods," or clustered groups, 

 while they are young and not very large; but from the middle or end of September, until they 

 leave the islands for the dangers of the great Pacific, in the winter, along into the heat of November, 

 they gather in this manner, sleeping and frolicking by tens of thousands, bunched together at 

 various places all over the islands contiguous to the breeding-grounds, and right on them. A 

 mother comes up from the sea, whither she has been to wash, and perhaps to feed, for the last day 

 or two, feeling her way along to about where she thinks her pup should be at least where she left 



'The only damage which those little fellows have up here, is being caught by an October gale down at the surf- 

 margin, when they have not fairly learned to swim ; large numbers have been destroyed by sudden "nips" of this 

 character. 



'A specimen to stuff. 



