122 ALASKA. 



single pup, perfectly white, weighing about three or four pounds. 

 This pup grows rapidly, and weighs, in three to four months, 

 forty or fifty pounds, and at that time has a coat of soft, steel- 

 gray hair on the head, limbs, and abdomen, with the back most 

 richly mottled and barred lengthwise with dark-brown and 

 brown-black. When they appear in the spring, following, this 

 gray tone to their color has become a dingy ocher, and the mot- 

 tling appears well over the head and on the upper side or back 

 of the flippers, or feet, correspondingly dim. 



There is no appreciable difference as to color or size between 

 the sexes. 



They are not polygamous, as far as I have observed. 



They are exceedingly timid and wary at all times, and in this 

 way they are diametrically opposed, not by shape alone, but by 

 habit and disposition, to the fur-seal and sea-lion. 



Their skin is of little value compared with that of the fur- 

 seal, and their chief merit is the relative greater juiciness and 

 sweetness of their flesh to those who are in any way partial to 

 seal-meat. 



I desire also to correct a common error, made in comparing 

 Phocidw with Otaridw, where it is stated that, in consequence 

 of the peculiar structure of their limbs, their progression on 

 land is ^'■mainly accomplished by a wriggling, serpentine motion 

 of the body, slightly assisted by the extremities." This is not 

 so ; for, when excited to run or exert themselves to reach the 

 water suddenly, they strike out quickly with both fore feet, 

 simultaneously lift and drag the whole body, without any wrig- 

 gling whatever, from 6 inches to a foot ahead and slightly from 

 the earth, according to the violence of the effort and the char- 

 acter of the ground ; the body then falls flat, and the fore-flip- 

 pers are free for another similar action, and this is done so 

 earnestly and rapidly that in attempting to head off a young 

 nearhpah from the water I was obliged to leave a brisk walk 

 and take to a dog-trot to do it. Tlie hind feet are not used 

 when exerted in rapid movement at all, and are dragged along 

 in the wake of the body, perfectly limp. They do use their 

 posterior parts, however, when leisurely climbing up and over 

 rocks, or playing one with another, but it is always a weak 

 effort, and clumsy. These remarks of mine, it should be borne 

 in mind, apply only to the Phoca vitulina, that is found around 

 these islands at all seasons of the year, but in very small num- 

 bers. I have never seen more than twenty five or thirty at any 



