LIFE IN THE PUR SEAL EOOKEEIES. 97 



June, in very small numbers; but rapidly after the 23d and 25tli of this month, every year, they 

 begin to flock up in such numbers as to fill the harems very perceptibly; and by the 8th or 10th 

 of July, they have all come, as a rule — a few stragglers excepted. The average weight of the. 

 females now will not be much more than eighty to ninety pounds each. 



Fourth. That the breeding-season is at its height from the 10th to the 15th of July every year, 

 and that it subsides entirely at the end of this month and early in August; also, that its method 

 and system are confined entirely to the land, never effected in the sea. 



Fifth. That the females bear their first young when they are three years old, and that the 

 period of gestation is nearly twelve months, lacking a few days only of that lapse of time. 



Sixth. That the females bear a single pup each, and that this is born soon after landing; no 

 exception to this rule has ever been witnessed or recorded. 



Seventh. That the "Seecatchie" which have held the harems from the beginning to the end 

 of the season, leave for the water in a desultory and straggling manner at its close, greatly 

 emaciated, and do not return, if they do at all, until six or seven weeks have elapsed, when the 

 regular systematic distribution of the families over the rookeries is at an end for the season. A 

 general medley of young males now are free, which come out of the water, and wander over all 

 these rookeries, together with many old males, which have not been on seraglio duty, and great 

 numbers of the females. An immense majority over all others present are pups, since only about 

 25 per cent, of the mother-seals are out of the water now at any one time. 



Eighth. That the rookeries lose their compactness and definite boundaries of true breeding 

 limit and expansion by the 25th to the 28th of July every year; then, after this date, the pups 

 begin to haul back, and to the right and left, in small squads at first, but as the season goes on, 

 by the 18th of August, they depart without reference to their mothers; and when thus scattered, 

 the males, females, and young swarm over more than three and four times the area occupied by 

 them when breeding and born on the rookeries. The system of family arrangement and uniform 

 compactness of the breeding classes breaks up at this date. 



Ninth. That by the 8th or 10th of August the pups born nearest the water first begin to learn 

 to swim ; and that by the 15th or 20th of September they are all familiar, more or less, with the 

 exercise. 



Tenth. That by the middle of September the rookeries are entirely broken up; confused, 

 straggling bands of females are seen among bachelors, pups, and small squads of old males, 

 crossing and recrossing the ground in an aimless, listless manner. The season now is over. 



Eleventh. That many of the Seals do not leave these grounds of Saint Paul and Saint George 

 before the end of December, and some remain even as late as the 12th of January; but that by the 

 end of October and the beginning of November CA'ery year, all the Fur Seals of mature age — five 

 and six years, and upward — have left the islands. The younger males go with the others: many 

 of the pups still range about the islands, but are not hauled to any great extent on the beaches or 

 the flats. They seem to prefer the rocky shore-margin, and to lie as high up as they can get 

 on such bluffy rookeries as Tolstoi and the Eeef. By the end of this month, November, they are, 

 as a rule, all gone. 



Such is the sum and the substance of my observations which relate to the breeding-grounds 

 alone on Saint Paul and Saint George. It is the result of summering and wintering on them, 

 and these definite statements I make with that confidence which one always feels, when he speaks 

 of that which has entered into his mind by repeated observation, and has been firmly grounded 

 by careful deductions therefrom. 



The "Holltjsohiokie" ok "Bachelor" Seals: A description. — I now call the attention 



7 F 



