AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 305 



table of these weights given below it will be observed that the adult 

 females correspond with the three years old males ; also, that the 

 younger cows weigh frequently only seventy-five pounds, and many 

 of the older ones go as high as one hundred and twenty, but an av- 

 erage of eighty to eighty-five pounds is the rule. Those specimens 

 just noted which I weighed were examples taken by me for trans- 

 mission to the Smithsonian Institution, otherwise I should not 

 have been permitted to make this record of their bulk, inasmuch 

 as weighing them means to kill them ; and the law and the habit, 

 or rather the prejudice of the entire community up there, is unan- 

 imously in oj^position to any such proceeding, for they never touch 

 females, and never go near or disturb the breeding-grounds on 

 such an errand. It will be noticed, also, that I have no statement 

 of the weights of any exceedingly fat and heavy males which appear 

 first on the breeding grounds in the spring ; tliose which I have 

 referred to, in the table above given, were very much heavier at the 

 time of their first appearance, in May and June, than at the moment 

 Avhen they were in my hands, in July ; but the cows, and the other 

 classes, do not sustain j^rotracted fasting, and therefore their avoirdu- 

 pois may be considered substantially the same throughout the year. 



Thus, from the fact that all the young seals and females do not 

 vary much in weight fi-om the time of their first coming out in 

 the spring, till that of their leaving in the fall and early winter, I 

 feel safe in saying that they feed at irregular but not long intervals, 

 during this period when they are here under our observation, since 

 they are constantly changing from land to water and from water to 

 land, day in and day out. I do not think that the young males fast 

 longer than a week or ten days at a time, as a rule. 



By the end of October and November 10th, a great mass of 

 the " hoUuschickie," the trooping myriads of English Bay, South- 

 west Point, Reef Parade, Lukannon Sands, the table-lands of Pola- 

 vina, and the mighty hosts of Novastoshnah, at St. Paul, together 

 with the quota of St. George, had taken their departure from these 

 shores, and had gone out to sea, feeding upon the receding 

 schools of fish that were now retiring to the deeper waters of the 

 North Pacific, where, in that vast expanse, over which rolls an un- 

 broken billow, five thousand miles from Japan to Oregon, they 

 spend the winter and the early spring, until they reappear and 

 break up, with their exuberant life, the dreary winter-isolation of 

 the land which gave them birth. 

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