106 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



pup, nothing else, and gravely assured me that they knew it owed its existence to the fecundation 

 of a sea-lion cow by a fur-seal bull; if not so, how could it get that color? I was also confronted 

 with a specimen— a full and finely grown four-year-old Gallorhinus which had, at some earlier day, 

 lost its testicles either by fighting or accident while at sea; perhaps shaven off by the fangs of a 

 saw-toothed shark, and also gravely asked to subscribe to the presence of a hermaphrodite ! 



Undoubtedly some abnormal birth shapes must make their appearance occasionally; but at 

 no time while I was there, searching keenly for any such manifestation of malformation on the 

 rookeries, did I see a single example. The morphological symmetry of the Fur Seal is one of the 

 most salient of its characteristics, viewed as it rallies here in such vast numbers, but the osteological 

 differentiation and asymmetry of this animal are equally surprising. 



Wheee do the Seals die ?— It is perfectly evident that a large percentage of this immense 

 number of Seals must die every year from natural limitation of life. They do not die on these 

 islands ; that much I am certain of. Not one dying a natural death could I find or hear of on the 

 grounds; they evidently lose their lives at sea, preferring to sink with the n^or mortis into the 

 cold, blue depths of the great Pacific, or beneath the green waves of Bering Sea, rather than to 

 encumber and disfigure their summer haunts on the Pribylov Islands. 



The ebproduction of the Fur Seal.^ — By treating this subject at length, my object is to 

 fix attention upon several points connected with the reproduction of the Fur Seal which have vital 

 importance to its relation with, and residence upon, the breeding-grounds of these islands under 

 discussion. In the first place, naturalists generally have taken notice of the generative appara- 

 tus exhibited by the Phocidce; and, while they have spoken at length in anatomical detail and 

 discussion of the male organs of the Otariidw, yet they exhibit a strange neglect or oversight 

 with respect to those of the female. The singular cloacal arrangement of the female organs of 

 generation in the Phocidce has excited comment and description from the earliest times. 



The modification of the generative apparatus peculiar to the male Otariidce, in contradistinc- 

 tion to those organs possessed by the male Phocidm, has been noticed to some extent by several 

 authorities^ prior to the date of this publication; but, while calling attention to this marked change 

 in the morphology of the male organs of the Otariidw, they are silent in regard to the fact that, 

 though the Phocidce are very distinct, by the armature of the males, from the Otariidce, yet the 

 cloacal arrangement of the females in both genera is identical. This is in itself, as I view it, quite 

 as remarkable with regard to the females as it is noteworthy in respect to the males. Surely the 

 wonderful modification of the physical structure of the male Fur Seal from that of his kindred, 

 the Hair Seal, is very great ; and we are not surprised to find that his generative organs are pro- 

 nounced, in common with all the others, distinct. So the females differ, physically, in every respect, 

 to as great a degree, with the solitary exception of the intra-uterine life, and the cloacal form of 

 the external generative organs. 



Necessity op xjndekstanding the subject. — This subject of the method of reproduction, 



'When they the approaching time perceive, 

 They flee the deep, and watery pastures leave : 

 On the dry ground, far from the s-svelling tide, 

 Bring forth their yonng, and on the shores abide 

 Till twice six times they see the Eastern gleams 

 Brighten the hills, and tremble on the streams, 

 The thirteenth mom, soon as the early dawn 

 Hangs out its crimson folds or spreads its lawn, 

 No more the fields and lofty coverts please. 

 Each hugs her own, and hastes to rolling seas. 



— Old Roman poem : Hair Seals of the Mediterranean. 

 'Al/LBN: North American Pinnipeds, 1880. Murib : Trans. Zool. See, 1869-72. 



