THE ALASKAN SEA-LION. 3o9 



feet below, and propels itself, for .about ten or fifteen minutes, like 

 a cigar-steamer, at the rate of six or seven knots, if undisturbed ; 

 but, if chased or alarmed, it seems fairly to fly under water, and 

 can easily maintain for a long time a speed of fourteen or fifteen 

 miles per hour. Like the fur-seal, its propulsion through water 

 is the work entirely of its powerful fore-flippers, which are simul- 

 taneously struck out, both together, and back against the water, 

 feathering forward again to repeat, while the hind flippers are 

 simply used as a rudder oar in deflecting an ever-varying swift 

 and abrupt course of the animal. On land its hind flippers are 

 employed just as a dog uses its feet in scratching fleas — the long 

 peculiar toe-nails thereof seeming to reach and comb those spots 

 afi:ected by vermin, which annoys it, as the fur-seal is, to a great 

 extent, and causes them both to enjoy a protracted scratching. 



Again, both genera, CallorhinuH and Eumetopias, are happiest 

 when the surf is strongest and wildest. Just in proportion to the. 

 fury of a gale, so nuicli the greater joy and animation of these ani- 

 mals. They delight in riding on the crests of each dissolving 

 breaker up to a moment when it fairly foams over ii-on-bound rocks. 

 At that instant they disapjjear like phantoms beneath the creamy 

 surge, to reappear on the crown of the next mighty billow. 



When landing, they always ride on the surf, so to speak, to an 

 objective point : and, it is marvellous to see with what remarkable 

 agility they will worm themselves up steep, rocky landings, having 

 an inclination greater than forty-live degrees, to flat bluflf-tops 

 above, which have an almost perpendicular drop to water. 



As the sea-lion is without fur, its skin has little or no commer- 

 cial value.* The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in 



* The sea-lion and hair-seals of Bering Sea, having no commercial value in 

 the eyes of civilized men, have not been subjects of interest enough to the 

 pioneers of those waters for mention in particular ; such record, for instance, as 

 that given of the walrus, the sea-otter, and the fur-seal. Steller was the first to 

 draw the line clearly between them and seals in general, especially defining 

 their separation from the fur-seal ; still his description is far from being defi- 

 nite or satisfactory in the light of our present knowledge of the animal. 



In the South Pacific and Atlantic the sea-lion has been curiou.sly con- 

 founded by many of our earliest writers with the sea-elephant, Macrorhinns 

 leouinus, and its reference is inextricably entangled with the fur-seal at the 

 Falklands, Kerguelen's Land, and the Crozettes. The proboscidean seal, how- 

 ever, seems to be the only pinni^^ed wlucli visits the Antarctic cuntiuent ; but 



