284 OUR ARCTIC PROYIIS^CE. 



when it is compared with an adult form, the neck being also rela- 

 tively shorter and thicker. The eye is lai-ge. 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 feeding 

 and bathing quite frequnetly after bearing their young and an im- 

 mediate subsequent coitus with the male : they usual!}' return to the 

 spot or its immediate neighborhood, where they leave their pups, 

 crying out for them and recognizing the individual replies ; though 

 ten thousand around, all together, should blaat at once, they 

 quickl}" 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 these jDups 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 ai'e young and not very 

 large ; thus, from the middle or end of September iintil they leave 

 the islands for the dangers of the great Pacific in the winter, along 

 by the first 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 perhajDS 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 it last ; but perhaps she misses it, and finds instead 

 a swarm of pups in which it has been incorporated, owing to its 

 great fondness for society. The mother, without first entering into 

 a crowd of thousands, calls just as a sheep does for a lamb, 

 and out of all the din she — if not at first, at the end of a few trials 

 — recognizes the voice of her offspring, and then advances, striking- 

 out right and left toward the position fi'om which it replies ; but if 

 the pup happens at this time to be asleep, it gives, of course, no 

 response, even though it were close by. In the event of such silence 

 the cow, after calling for a time without being answered, curls her- 

 self up and takes a nap or lazily basks, to be usually more success- 

 ful, or wholly so, when she calls again. 



The pups themselves do not know their own mothers, a fact 

 which I ascertained by careful observation ; but they are so consti- 

 tuted that they incessantly cry out at short intervals during the 

 whole time they are awake, and in this way the mother can pick out 

 from the monotonous blaating of thousands of pups her own, and 



