THE FUE SEAL: BATTLES OP THE MALES. 79 



Eelative duration of LIFE: Eepeodtjction is tekeestrial. — Tbis tact also shows 

 that, as the female Fur Seal is so conspicuously inferior to the male, physically viewed, as to size 

 and weight, so also is her life lessened. In other words, when she is matured, as she must be by 

 her third year, in bearing then her first pup, she can reasonably be expected to live no longer than 

 nine or ten years, according to the general natural law governing this question ; while the male, 

 not coming to his maturity and physical prime until he is five or six years of age, lives, in obedience 

 to the same law, fifteen or twenty years. 



Old and young males fighting. — The males under six years of age, although hovering 

 about the sea margins of the breeding-grounds, do not engage in much fighting there ; it is the six 

 and seven year old males, ambitious and flushed with their reproductive consciousness, that swarm 

 out and do battle with the older males of these places. The young male of this latter class is, 

 however, no match for an old fifteen or twenty year old bull, provided that the aged " Seecatchie" 

 retains his teeth; for, with these weapons, his relatively harder thews and sinews give him the 

 advantage in almost every instance, among the hundreds of combats that I have witnessed. Thet^e 

 trials of strength between the old and the young are incessant until the rookeries are mapped out; 

 and by common consent the males of all classes recognize the coming of the females. After their 

 arrival and settlement over the whole extent of the breeding-grounds, about the 15th July at the 

 latest, very little fighting takes place.^ 



Only one pup born at time op parturition. — Touching the number of young born at a 

 birth, the most diligent inquiry and scrutiny of observation on the rookeries have satisfied me that 

 it is confined to a single pup. If they have twins, 1 have failed to discover a single instance of 

 that character. I also failed to notice a malformed pup or a monster anywhere throughout the 

 multitudes under my observation, from July until the middle of November every season. I think 

 this somewhat noteworthy, as it presents, perhaps, better than any other exhibition in the animal 



' It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent possessed by these animals enables them to reach 

 the breeding-grounds at about the place where they left them the season previously ; surely the nose of (ho Fur Seal 

 is endowed to a superlative degree with those organs of smell, and its range of appreciation in this respect must be 

 very great. 



" In carnivorous quadrupeds the structure of the bones of the nasal cavities is more intricate than in the her- 

 bivorous, and is calculated to afford a far more extensive sr.rface for the distribution of the nerve. In the Seal this 

 conformation is most fully developed and the bony plates are here not turbinated, but ramitied, as shown in the woodcut. 

 Eight or more principal branches rise from the main trunk, and each of these is divided and subdivided to an extreme 

 degree of minuteness, so as to form in all many hundred plates. The olfactory membrane, with all its nerves, is closely 

 applied to every plate in this vast assemblage, as well as to the main trunk and to the internal surface of the surrounding 

 cavity, so that its extent cannot be less than 120 square inches in each nostril. An organ of such exquisite sensibility 

 requires an extraordinary provision for securing it against injury, and nature has supplied a mechanism for the 

 purpose, enabling the animal to close at pleasure the orifice of the nostril." — Harwood: Comp. Anat. and Physiol., 

 Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii, p. 403. 



I noticed in all sleeping and waking Seals that the nasal apertures were never widely expanded ; and that they 

 were at intervals rapidly opened and closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath; the nostrils of the Fur 

 Seal are, as a rule, well oiiened when the animal is out of water, and remain so while it is on land. 



The distances at sea, away from the Pribylov Islands, in which Fur Seals are found during the breeding season, 

 are very considerable; scattered records have been made of seeing large bands of them during August as far down the 

 northwest coast as they probably range at any season of the year, viz, well out at sea in the latitude of Cape Flattery, 

 47° to 49° south latitude. In the winter and spring, up to middle of June, all classes are found here spread out over 

 wide areas of the ocean ; then, by the 1.5th June they will have all departed, the first and the latest, en route for the 

 Pribylov Islands. Then, when seen again iu this extreme southern range, I presume the unusually early examples of 

 return, toward the end of August, are squads of the yearlings of both sexes, for this division is always the last to land 

 on, and the first to leave, the Seal Mands, annuallj'. Also, tho twoyear-old females which have been covered on the 

 breeding-grounds during Juno and July undoubtedly stray back to sea, and down again from the Pribylov grouj), very 

 early in August, some of them as far as the coast-heads of Fuca Straits; at least, many of them at one time are never 

 seen massed on the rookeries, and as they do not consort with the Holluschickie and yearlings on land, quite a number 

 of their large aggregate doubtless make frequent and extended fishing excursions during the height of the breeding 



