96 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



given, however, by these seal-mothers of desire or action in fondling or caressing their pups ; nor 

 do the young appear to sport with any others than the pups themselves, when together. Some- 

 times a yearling and a five or six months old pup will have a long-continued game between them- 

 selves. They are decidedly clannish in this respect creatures of caste, like Hindoos. 



POWER OF SCENT: ODOR OF THE SEALS. The greatest activity displayed by any one of 

 the five senses of the Seal, is evidenced in its power of scent. This faculty is all that can be 

 desired in the line of alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult Seal from the soundest sleep, 

 when from a half to a quarter of a mile distant, no matter how softly I proceeded, if I got to the 

 windward, though the.y sometimes took alarm when I was a mile off. 



They leave evidences of their being on these great reproductive fields, chiefly at the rookeries, 

 in the hundreds of dead carcasses which mark the last of those animals that have been rendered 

 intirin, sick, or were killed by fighting among themselves in the early part of the season, or of those 

 which have crawled far away from the scene of battle to die from death-wounds received in the 

 bitter struggle for a harem. On the rookeries, wherever these lifeless bodies rest, the. living, old 

 and young, clamber and patter backward and forward over and on the putrid remains, and by this 

 constant stirring up of decayed matter, give rise to an exceedingly disagreeable and far-reaching 

 "funk." This has been, by all writers who have dwelt on the subject, referred to as the smell 

 which these animals emit for another reason erroneously culled the " rutting odor." If these 

 creatures have any od<>r peculiar to them when in this condition, I will frankly confess that I am 

 unable to distinguish it from the fumes which are constantly being stirred up and rising out of 

 these decaying carcasses of the older Seals, as well as from the bodies of the few pups which have 

 been killed accidentally by the heavy bulls fighting over them, charging back and forth against 

 one another, so much of the time. 



They have, however, a very characteristic and peculiar smell, when they are driven and get 

 heated; their breath exhalations possess a disagreeable, faint, sickly odor, and when I have 

 walked within its influence at the rear of a seal-drive, 1 could almost fancy, as it entered my 

 nostrils, that 1 stood beneath an ailanthus tree in bloom; but this odor can by no means be 

 confounded with what is universally ascribed to another cause. It is also noteworthy, that if 

 your finger is touched ever so lightly to a little fur-seal blubber, it will smell very much like 

 that which I have appreciated and described as peculiar to their breath, which arises from them 

 when they are driven, only it is a little stronger. Both the young and old Fur Seals have this 

 same breath taint at all seasons of the year. 



REVIEW OF STATEMENTS CONCERNING LIFE IN THE ROOKERIES. To recapitulate and sum 

 up the system and regular method of life and reproduction on these rookeries of Saint Paul and 

 Saint George, as the Seals seem to have arranged it, I shall say that 



First. The earliest bulls land in a negligent, indolent way, at the opening of the season, soon 

 after the rocks at the water's edge are free from ice, frozen snow, etc. This is, as a rule, about 

 the 1st to the 5th of every May. They land from the beginning to the end of the season in perfect 

 confidence and without fear; they are very fat, and will weigh at an average 500 pounds each; 

 some stay at the water's edge, some go to the tier back of them again, and so on until the whole 

 rookery is mapped out by them, weeks in advance of the arrival of the first female. 



Second. That by the 10th or 12th of June, all the male stations on the rookeries have been 

 mapped out and fought for, and held in waiting by the "Seecatchie." These males are, as a rule, 

 bulls rarely ever under six years of age; most of them are over that age, being sometimes three, 

 and occasionally doubtless four, times as old. 



Third. That the cows make their first appearance, as a class, on or after the 12th or 15th of 



