112 NATURAL HISTOEY OP AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



may have been during the winter and spring previous, or is when they land, establishes without 

 doubt this exact limit of their gestation. 



Impoetancb of this service. — The reason why I dwell upon these details is because 

 they have a very important bearing upon the question as to what ratio of males every year is 

 needed for service on this great breeding-ground of Bering Sea. If the common opinion, hitherto 

 entertained, was tenable, of free and effective pelagic coition, then it will be readily understood 

 that nearly all the males from four years up, and on, could have easy access to the females; and 

 that it would be a matter of very small concern how many old males, or rather those males upon 

 the land located over the rookeries, were fit for service. But understanding, as I now do, without 

 a shadow of tenable contradiction, that these "Seecatchie" which receive, fight for, and cover the 

 females on the rookeries, are the only active fertilizing powers toward the reproduction and 

 perpetuation of their kind, the importance of my detailed description of the method of coition is 

 evident; for it shows conclusively that unless we see every year, long prior to the arrival of the 

 females, a full supply of able-bodied " Seecatchie" holding out upon and located over the rookeries 

 of Saint Paul and Saint George — unless we see such a number in good condition — we may safely 

 count upon the fact that danger will arise of imperfect and nugatory fertilization for the coming 

 year. It will not do to indulge the hope, should a scarcity or diminution of the old males ever 

 occur, when the rookeries are mapped out in spring, of the deficiency being made good by the 

 young males which are swimming around everywhere in the water. 



Vitality of the male. — I believe that an able-bodied adult " Seecatchie " is capable of 

 serving well from the 14th June to the 14th July, during which period the height of the breeding 

 season occurs, one hundred females. If he is, however, as he frequently is, enfeebled by previous 

 fighting and struggling with other males to hold the station which he has selected and fought for, 

 it is more than likely that his virility will not extend beyond the proper serving of twenty or thirty 

 cows. As I have said in another place, I found great difficulty in finding, to my own satisfaction, 

 a fair number of females as the average to every harem on the rookery.' Some instances occur 

 where the male treats forty-five or fifty females, owing to the peculiar configuration of the landing 

 grounds; but most generally, and as the rule, I think fifteen or twenty cows to every bull is a true 

 computation; hence I do not believe, under any normal circumstances and all normal disad- 

 vantages, such as fighting involves by weakening the males, that, when the females arrive, there 

 is the least risk of a single one of them getting back to the water without a perfect and effectual 

 impregnation. A common opinion was prevalent on the islands among the employes touching this 

 matter, that, when the female was not instantly covered during her first heat, she went to the 

 water, cooled off, and on returning, sexual desire never reappeared, and she became a farrow or 

 barren cow from that time to the end of her natural life. Analogous physiology confutes this 



' This striking and accurate average is still further complicated by that unknown distribution of the virgin females 

 which come up to the rookeries every year for their. first meeting with the virile males. What proportion of them 

 reach the rear of the breeding-grounds compared with their numbers which are served at the water-line ? I surely am 

 at fault to say, for they do not leave that tangible evidence which the other older cows do in the forms of their young. 

 One of the curious contradictions to generally received ideas of the habit of Seals is the fact that the Fur Seal will 

 not rest either upon snow or ice ; it seems to positively avoid all contact with either of those substances upon which 

 the Pliooidce wholly, and the Sea Lions to some degree, delight in hauling over. Callorhinus has the warmest of sea] 

 coats, by all odds, yet it dreads a snowy or an icy bed with as much sincerity as any habitu^ of the tropics can. The 

 Sea Lions and Hair Seals have often been surprised in sporting, or sleeping on the ice floes of Bering Sea in the spring, 

 by whalemen while cruising at the edge of the frozen pack, waiting for the channel to open, clear into the Arctic 

 Oi^ean ; as neither Bumetopias nor Fhoca has any under wool, their sea-jackets are not half as heavy as those peculiar 

 to the bodies of Fur Seals ; hence in taking personal notice of this odd aversion of the Callorhinus to snow and ice, I 

 believe that its dislike is one of pure sentimentality rather than one based on physical inability to rest upon as cold 

 surfaces, for there is not much difference between the water's temperature and that of the snow and ice in the spring — 

 10° Fahr.j perhaps — ^both cold enough at all events. 



