72 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



animal seen to lick a wound. In one of the rookery battles a bull seized another by his 

 neck and held him for at least a full minute, while the bitten bull looked complacently 

 heavenward without as much as moving, until he suddenly countered on his adversary 

 and grasped him by the throat. I^ot only do seals appear to be indifferent to pain, 

 but, provided an object is motionless, they seem quite as inditterent to disagreeable 

 sights and equally unpleasant smells. They walk over and about the dead and 

 decaying carcasses on the rookeries and lie down to sleep among them without giving 

 them the least attention, caring so little that a cow was seen dozing iieacefully with 

 her head all but pillowed on the bloated body of a pup. 



The stolid behavior of the seals on the killing grounds has been remarked by 

 Elliott, and pitiful tales of their mad fright, being crazed by the sight of their 

 slaughtered companions, and frantic efforts to escape are utter rubbish. The behavior 

 of the first .seal turned loose determines the behavior of the i est of the herd. If he 

 hurries, the others hurry, and each one eggs on the other; if he stops to rest, all 

 subse<}uently rejected stop to rest. 



There is no doubt that the seals are friglitened when driven up to the clubbers, 

 but they have Just as much fear of the boy who is guarding one side of a group of 

 1,000 seals as they have of the men who are about to knock them or their companions 

 on the head. Their fear is instinctive and irrational, and is not due to any reasoning 

 process or any dread of what is to come. It is largely caused by the discomfort of 

 being crowded together. So little true fear do these beasts possess that the seals in 

 a pod before the killers will snap at each other Just the same as if they were being 

 crowded by their neighbors in the hauling grounds. So far from being crazed with 

 fright, when turned loose they are as liable as not to stoj) within 50 yards of the killing 

 and there rest and scratch for half an h(mr, complacently watching the others being 

 clubbed to death. 



The seal is not intelligent enough to be superstitious, as is the case with the dog 

 and horse; the source of his fear must be real and tangible, and he never imagines an 

 enemy in stick or stone or other motionless object, unless it stands up above the sky 

 line and suggests a man. The only possible exception to this is when he is wakened 

 from a sound sleep, when, like other unreasoning creatures, his first idea is to run. 

 On such occasions a veritable stampede may occur if a number of seals are together, 

 for the scuttling of one rouses the other, and each urges his neighbor on to Hy. Mr. 

 Clark noticed a most curious incident on Clorbatch, where a stampede was imnii 

 nent because a few seals near the water, aroused by the breaking of an unusually 

 large wave, started up in alarm and in turn communicated their fright to the 

 surrounding herd. 



If love of ott'spring be indicative of intelligence the fur seal may be considered 

 as very low in the intellectual scale, for it is not probable that among the higher 

 vertebrates there is another which evinces so little affection for its young and is so 

 heedless of its welfare. During our visits to the rookeries there were naturally many 

 cases in which mother and pup were startled by our approach, and in every instance 

 save one the alarm shown by the cow was evidently for herself and not for her offspring, 

 since she never stopped to defend her young one, but sought safety in flight, leaving 

 the pup to care for itself as best it might. Similarly when a rookery is stampeded by 

 the exit of a vanquished bull, or when, later in the season, a band of seals is frightened 



