18fi THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



their arms are so cut off from the hard, uneatable roots and stems that they seem 

 to be cut off with the edge of a dull knife. When the tide comes in these roots 

 and stems are washed ashore, and lying there in great heaps on the seashore they 

 betray to the visitor the present quarters of these guests; inasmuch as the stems of 

 sea plants are tougher and thicker than those of land plants, the lips are made much 

 stronger and harder than are the lips of any of the land aaimals; therefore the lips 

 are also inedible, and can not be softened by boiling or iu any other way. The internal 

 siructure of the lips is so arranged that wheu cut they are like a checkerboard, 

 consisting of very small squares; there are countless very small, thick, red, rhomboid 

 or trapezoid squares, with which others that are white, tendinous, full of cells like 

 network aud containing liquid oil, are interspersed in equal numbers. These lips 

 wheu boiled in water very easily yield a great amount of oil, and wheu this oil is 

 tried out the white cells appear like so much tendinous network. The purpose of 

 this structure seems to me to be a threefold one: (1) That the strength and density 

 of the lips may be increased, and that they may not be so easily exposed to any 

 danger from without; (2) that the heavy lips may be more easily raised aud moved, 

 inasmuch as the origin and insertion of the muscles {caput et caudae hornm muscu- 

 lorum) are so disposed that the origin of the muscles is set obliquely to the opening 

 of the mouth, and the insertion of the muscles obliquely to the top of the head; so 

 that with their beginnings and ends the lips make, as it were, a wreath of muscles; 

 (.■^) that by means of this structure the lips may be moved with a sort of spiral motion, 

 aud that, since the head on account of the continuous thick crust can be moved only 

 with difficulty, it may not be necessary for them to move the whole body as often as 

 they wish to pull off' the tenacious seaweed. 



They masticate differently from all other animals; not with teeth, which they 

 lack altogetiier, but with two strong white bones, or solid tooth masses, one of which 

 is set in the palate and the other is fastened in the inferior maxilla, and corresi>ouds to 

 the first. 



The insertion itself, or counectiou, is entirely anomalous, and would be expressed 

 by no known name; gomphosis we can not call it, because the bones are not fasfteued 

 in the maxillae, but each is held by many pai)illae and pores, pores and papillae 

 alternating, in the palate and in the inferior mandible, besides, in front it is inserted 

 into the papillary membrane of the internal upper lip, and at the sides in the grooved 

 edge of tlie bone, and at the back, with a double process, into the palate and inferior 

 maxilla, and is in this way made firm. 



These molar bones are perforated below with many little holes, like a thimble 

 [netriciim digitalc), or like a sponge, in which the arteries and nerves are inserted in 

 the same way as in the teeth of other animals. Above they are smootliaud excavated 

 witli many winding, wavy canals, and between them are eminences which in mastication 

 fit into the canals of the corresponding bone so ])erfectly that the seaweed (fnci) is 

 ground and mashed between them as between a fuller's beams or between uaillstones. 

 I have had a drawing made of these bones, which will explain more clearly what is 

 less intelligible from the description. 



The nose is situated in the farthest tij) of the head, as in the hoise; there are two 

 nostrils, and a thi(!k cartilaginous column li inches wide between them. The nostrils 

 themselves are 2 inches long and Just as wide iu diameter. They are flat, and stretch 

 back with many curves or labyrinths. Inside, the nostrils are very wide, wrinkled, and 



