84 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRHilLOF ISLANDS. 



ordiuary circumstances, comparatively few are lost by drowiiiug. Until tbe pups 

 have learned to swim well tbey are careful not to venture beyoud their depth,' and 

 after they liave learned it takes a pretty heavy surf to drowu them, even before they 

 have mastered the art of diving beneath the crest of a wave. A x)ui) will come in on 

 a wave and go sprawling up the beach over the shingle and among the rocks in a 

 perfect smother of foam, and then, instead of thanking Providence for his escape, turn 

 about and swim out into the sea to repeat the performance.^ Certainly some do drown, 

 especially when startled into jumping from a clift'iuto a heavy surf, and the habit of 

 crawling under the bowlders leads to the destruction of others when the sea comes 

 up with the tide and catches pups in places whence they are unable to extricate them- 

 selves; but, after all, the number lost from these causes is small. In this connection it 

 is worth noting that the i^ercentage of drowned pups was higher in 189G than in 1897, 

 and this is in accord with the ditt'erence between the weather during the two seasons, 

 the summer of 1897 having been unusually quiet, so that up to August 1") there was 

 no surf sufficiently heavy to sweep incautious pups off the rocks. While at St. George, 

 on August 3 and 4, 1896, we experienced a fresh gale from the southwest, which sent a 

 heavy surf tumbling directly in on Zapadni. As the bowlder beach at the foot of the 

 cliffs was fairly swarming Avith pups just beginning to play in the water, it was a good 

 opportunity to see what damage, if any, would be wrought by an ordinary gale. A 

 visit to tlie rookery, however, failed to reveal the presence of a single drowned pup, 

 although the locality where the young seals were massed beneath the bluff was criti- 

 cally scanned with lield glasses and a careful search was made along the beach. The 

 l)Ups, as in other cases noted, had simply withdrawn from the water's edge, beyond the 

 breaker's reach, and Avere perfectly safe. 



Freshly drowned pups were found on Tolstoi shortly after this gale (August 7), 

 and later on drowned pups were obtained from Lower Zapadni and CJorbatch, but on 

 these rookeries the sea struck oblicjuely, and it would seem that this is more dangerous 

 than when it sets squarely ou shore. Jn the latter case, a pup if swept off by one 

 wave might be cast back by the next, but when the sea strikes diagonally it creates a 

 strong surfa(;e current, that would carry an unlucky puj) out and down the beach to 

 some place where the waves come directly in and there the lifeless body would be 

 cast ashore. 



Many a pup has been considered as having drowned, when in reality he had been 

 dead for days, perhaps weeks, before washing off the rookery, to form one of a so-called 

 "windrow of drowned pups" at some point farther up the beach. After the gale of 

 August 3 the sandy beach at Tolstoi was strewn with the bodies of long-dead pups, ' 

 while the gale of August 17 cast no less than 30 bodies on Zoltoi sands, nearly a 

 quarter of a mile north of Gorbatch rookery. A superficial observation of these 

 bodies might easily have created the belief that they had been drowned, when a 

 closer scrutiny would have shown that all had long been dead; that many weie in an 

 advanced stage of decomposition, and that some had the umbilical cord still attached. 

 (See PI. XIX.) 



' On several occasions in August, while visitiuj; the rookeries when ;i heavy surf wiis ruuniajf and 

 before the pups had learned to swim, they were seen to gather in a crowd along the edge of tlie water, 

 evidently hestitating between the devils and the deep sea. 



-In September and October pups were always to b(i seen sporting in the surf, even when it was 

 infinitely heavier than at any time iu August. 



^ There were '2'i'2 of them, not one of which had drowned; those which had perished from this 

 pause being found among the bowlders of the rookery proper farther to the west. 



