46 



THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Classits'G the " holluschickie " BY AGE. — When the "liolluscbickie" are up on land they can be readily 

 separated into their several classes as to age, by the color of their coats and size, when noted, namely, the yearlings, 

 the two, three, four, and five years old males. When the yearlings, or the first class, haul out, they are dressed just 

 as they were after they shed their pup-coats and took on the second covering, during the previous year in September 

 and October; and now, as they come out in the spring and summer, one year old, the males and females cannot be 

 distinguished apart, either by color or size, shape or action ; the yearlings of both sexes have the same steel-gray 

 backs and white stomachs, and are alike in behavior and weight. 



Nest year these yearling females, which are now trooping out with the youthful males on the hauling-gronnds, 

 will repair to the rookeries, while their male companions will be obliged to come again to this same spot. 



Shedding the hair: Stagey seals. — About the 15th and 20th of every August, they have become 

 ])erceptibly "stagey", or, in other words, their hair is well under way in shedding. . All classes, with the exception 

 of the pups, go through this process at this time every year. The process requires about six weeks between the 

 first dropping or falling out of the old over-hair, and its lull substitution by the new. This takes place, as a rule, 

 between August 1 and September 28i 



The fur is shed, but it is so shed that the ability of the seal to take to the water and stay there, and not be 

 physically chilled or ilisturbed during the jirocess of molting, is never imp.iired. The whole surface of these 

 extensive breeding-grounds, traversed over by us after the seals had gone, was literally matted with the shed 

 hair and fur. This under-fur or pelage is, however, so fine and delicate, and so ranch concealed and shaded by the 

 coarser over-hair, that a careless eye or a superficial observer might be pardoued in failing to notice the fact of its 

 dropping and renewal. 



The yearling cows retain the colors of the old coat in the new, when they shed it for the first time, and from 

 that time on, year after year, as they live and grow old. The young three-year-olds and the older cows look exactly 

 alike, as far as color goes, w^heu they haul up at first ami dry out on the rookeries, every June and July. 



The yearling males, however, make a radical change when they shed for the first time, for they come out from 

 their "staginess" in a nearly uniform dark gray, and graj' and black mixed, and lighter, with dark oclier to whitish 

 on the upper and under parts, respectively. This coat, next year, when they appear as two-year-olds, shedding for 

 the three-year old coat, is a very much darker gray, and so on to the third, fourth, and fifth seasou; then after this, 

 with age, they begin to grow more gray and brown, with rufousocherand whitish-tipped over-hair on the shoulders. 

 Some of the very old bulls 'change in their declining years to a uniform shade all over of dull-grayish ocher. The 

 full glory and beauty of the seal's moustache is denied to him until he has attained his seventh or eighth year. 



Comparative size of females and males. — The female does not get her full growth and weight until the 

 end of her fourth year, so far as I have observed, but she does most of her growing longitudinally in the first two; 

 after she has passed her fourth and fifth years, she weighs from 30 to 50 pounds more than she did in the days of 

 her youthful maternity. 



The male does not get his full growth and weight until the close of his seventh year, but realizes most of it, 

 osteologicaUy speaking, by the end of the fifth ; and from this it may be perhaps truly inferred, that the male seals 

 live to an average age of eighteen or twenty years, if undisturbed in a normal condition, and that the females 

 attain ten or twelve seasons under the same favorable circumstances. Their respective weights, when fnlly mature 

 and fat in the spring, will, in regard to the male, strike an average of from four to five hundred pounds, while the 

 females will show a mean of from 70 to SO pounds. 



I did not permit myself to fall into error in estimating this matter of weight, because I early found that 

 the apparent huge bulk of a sea-lion bull or fur-seal male, when placed upon the scales, shrank far below my 

 notions : 1 took a great deal of pains, on several occasions, during the killing-season, to have a jdatform 

 scale carted out into the field, and as the seals were knocked down, and before they were bled, 1 had them carefullj^ 

 weighed, constructing the following table from my observations: 



Table showing the weight, size, axd growth of the fur-seal (Callorhinus ursinxjs), from the pup 



to the adult, male and female. 



