280 OUR AECTIC PROVINCE. 



tion — to give a fair idea of the thousand and one positions in which 

 seals compose themselves and rest when on land. They may be said 

 to assume every possible attitude which a flexible body can be put 

 into, no matter how characteristic or seemingly forced or con- 

 strained. Their joints seem to be double-hinged — in fact, fitted with 

 ball and socket union of the bones. One favorite position, especially 

 with the females, is to perch upon a point or edge-top of some 

 rock, and throw their heads back upon their shoulders, with the 

 nose held directly up and aloft ; and then, closing their eyes, take 

 short naps without changing their attitude, now and then softly 

 lifting one or the other of their long, slender hind flippers, which 

 they slowly wave with that peculiar fanning motion to which I have 

 alluded heretofore. Another attitude, and one of the most com- 

 mon, is to curl themselves up just as a dog does on a hearth-rug, 

 bringing the tail and nose close together. They also stretch out, 

 laying the head close to the bod}', and sleep an hour or two without 

 rising, holding one of the hind flippers up all the time, now and 

 then gently moving it, the eyes being tightly closed. 



I ought, perhaps, to define the anomalous tail of the fur-seal 

 here. It is just about as important as the caudal appendage to a 

 bear ; even less significant. It is the very emphasis of abbreviation. 

 In the old males it is positively only four or five inches in length, 

 while among the females only two and a half to three inches, 

 wholly inconspicuous, and not even recognized by the casual 

 observer : they never wag or move it at all. 



I come now to speak of another feature which interested me 

 nearly, if not quite, as much as any other characteristic of this 

 creature, and that is their fashion of slumber. The sleep of the 

 fur-seal, seen on land, from the old male down to the youngest, is 

 always accompanied by an involuntary, nervous, muscular twitching 

 and slight shifting of the flippers, together with ever and anon 

 quivei'ing and uneasy rollings of the body, accompanied by a quick 

 folding anew of the fore flippers ; all of which may be signs, as it 

 were, in fact, of their simply having nightmares, or of sporting, in 

 a visionary way, far off in some dreamland sea. But, it may be 

 that as an old nurse said in reference to the smiles on a sleeping 

 child's face, they are disturbed by their intestinal parasites, I have 

 studied hundreds of such somnolent examples. Stealing softly up 

 so closely that I could lay my hand upon them from the point 

 where I was sitting, did I wish to, and watching the sleeping seals, 



