488 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



slowly; it becomes darker, finer, thicker, and softer, so that by the time they are two to three 

 years of age they are prime, though the animal is not full grown under its fourth or fifth year. 

 The white nose and mustache of the pup are not changed in the adult; the whiskers are white, 

 short, and stiff. 



When the skin is taken from the body the native makes but one cut in it, and that is at the 

 posterior; the body is turned literally inside out. The skin is next air-dried and stretched, so 

 that it then gives the erroneous impression of an animal at least C feet and over in length, with a 

 disproportionately lesser girth, suggestive of the shape of a weasel or mink. 



VARIETIES OF SKINS. Owing to the number of young skins brought iu to the traders' hands 

 by the natives, there is quite a variety iu the shading of the pelts. The prime skins are, however, 

 by their rare beauty, instantly distinguishable; there is the characteristic shimmering gloss and 

 velvety sheen always apparent in a fine specimen ; the fur, when blown open by the inspectors, 

 shows much lighter towards its roots than upon the surface, and extending over all are scattered 

 glistening hairs, whitish to pure white, which add greatly, or rather curiously, to the beauty of the. 

 coat. 



SWIMMING HABITS. The feet are so small that really nothing of the whole expansion of the 

 sea-otter's skin is lost when they are cut off. I should say, however, that the hind flippers evi- 

 dently are the swimming or propulsive organs. They, compared with the impotent tiny fore feet, 

 are large and strong, and webbed between the toes like those of a duck. The natives say that this 

 creature swims with surprising rapidity and is a famous diver ; and that in its desperation and 

 determination not to be captured alive, it will deliberately jam itself into rocky interstices and 

 crevices below the surface of the water, from which it never rises. 



SEA-OTTER NOT GREGARIOUS. They are not gregarious to any noteworthy extent, seeming 

 to go about in solitary, isolated pairs, though the younger of their kind do undoubtedly gather 

 together in bodies of forty or fifty, with a sprinkling of a few parent otters ; and, at times, so far 

 forget themselves as to crawl en masse upon some lonely rocky reef awash, or clamber over the 

 bowlders of an island beach. 



NURSING THE YOUNG. The female has two teats only, and they resemble externally those of 

 a cat ; they are placed between the hind limbs on the abdomen. The pup nurses a year at least, 

 and longer if its mother has no other. The maternal otter is said to lie upon her back in the water 

 or upon the rocks, as the case may be when she is surprised and desires to protect her young. 

 She clasps the pup in her fore paws, and, turning her back to the danger, receives the Aleutian 

 spear or the instantaneous death wound from the bullet ; but desert her young, never. 



SHEDDING HABITS. The natives also assured me that as these skins, taken by them during 

 every month of the year, never show at any season those signs of shedding and staginess so marked 

 in the seal, they do not renew their pelage by that process, but that it grows and falls out just as 

 the hair on our heads does. There seems to be a reason for this peculiarity iu the fact that they 

 are in the water at all times and must be ready to take to it at any moment. 



SLEEPING HABITS. The natives say that the sea-otter mother sleeps in the water on her 

 back with her young clasped between her fore paws. The pup cannot live without its mother, 

 though frequent attempts have been made by the Aleuts to raise them, as they often capture them 

 alive. They have no commercial value, but, like other species of wild animals, it seems to be so 

 deeply imbued with fear and distrust of man that it invariably dies from self-imposed starvation. 



FOOD. Their food, as might be inferred from the flat molars of dentition,* is almost entirely 



* The remarkably concise and thorough discussion of the dentition of this animal, which Dr. Elliot Coues gives 

 in his " Fnr-Bearing Animals," ]>]. UlfcJ to IK54 inclusive, renders it simply superfluous for me to attempt its repetition 

 In -re. 'I'll is lilllr brochure of I lie doctor's should bo in tin- hands of every naturalist., at. home or abroad. 



