184 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS 



tubules of the cuticle. Now, these tubules rest upon one another very closely; they 

 are tenacious, wet, and tumid, and they do not appear wlien the cuticle is cut 

 horizontally, but the surface is smooth, as the hoofs of certain animals when they are 

 cut. But as soon as it is hung up in pieces and exposed to the sun and becomes dry, 

 it has perpendicular fissures and can be broken like bark, and then this tubulous 

 structure comes clearly to view. Through these tubes a thin, serous mucus is exuded, 

 in larger quantities on the sides and about the head, and in smaller quantities on the 

 back. When the animal has lain for some hours upon the dry shore, the back becomes 

 dry, but the head and sides are always wet. 



ISIow, this thick cuticle seems given to the animal for two purposes, principally: 

 (1) That, inasmuch as the animal is compelled, for tiie sake of getting a living, to live 

 continously in rough and rugged places, and in the winter among the ice, it m;iy not 

 rub off' the skin, or that it may not be beaten by the heavy waves and bruised with 

 the stones, and when pursued it is protected by this coat of mail; (2) that the natural 

 heat may not be dissipated in the summer by too profuse perspiration (niviium trans- 

 pirrtiulo), or completely counteracted by tlie cold of winter. And that would be 

 natural, for it has to live, not in the depths of the sea as other animals and fishes, but 

 it is always comjjelled in feeding to expose half of its body to the cold. 



I have observed in the case of many that were cast up dead upon the shore of the 

 sea, that the cuticle had been broken oft" on one side or the other, and that that had 

 been the cause of their death; and this happens principally in the winter time, from 

 the ice. 



And I observed many times in animals that had been captured and drawn on 

 shore with a hook, that great pieces of cuticle had been pulled off" in consequence of 

 the violent thrashing of its body and tail and its resisting with its front feet, and that 

 the broken piece of cuti(;le that covered the arms and caudal tin was like a hoof; all 

 this goes to make my opinion stronger. Cuticle of exactly the same sort covers the 

 whale {halacH(t)j although no mention is made of it by the authorities; and almost the 

 whole of the cuti(!le was rubbed off" from a whale that was washed up dead upon our 

 island on the 1st day of August, for during several days it had been tossed about by 

 the waves, this way and that, and bruised upon the rocks before it came to our shore. 



While this cuticle is wet it is tawny black, like the skin of a smoked ham, but 

 when it is dry it is wholly black. Jn certain animals it is marked with rather large 

 white spots and zones, and this color penetrates clear to the cutis. This cuticle 

 about the head, eyes, ears, breasts, and under the arms, where it is rough, is thickly 

 infested by insects, and it frecpiently happens that they perforate the cuticle and 

 wound even the cutis itself. When this happens, large, thi(;k, warty prominences 

 arise from the Jyniph of the cutis, or from the broken glands that preserve the oil, as 

 It were, in the little cells, m the same manner as in whales, and oftentimes make the 

 above-mentioned places foul. 



Under the cuticle lies the cutis surrounding the whole body. This is 2 lines 

 thick, soft, white, very firm in strength and structure just like that of the whale, and 

 it can be put to the same uses. 



In comparison with the huge mass of the restof its body the head is small, short, 

 and closely connected with the body; m figure it is a square oblong, widening from 

 the top toward the lower jaw. The top itself is Hat and covered with a black cuticle, 

 exceedingly scraggly and a third part thinner than the rest of the cuticle and more 



