THE LIVING WORLD. 
127 
it sometimes has two), unfits it for a life on the ocean wave. When the young 
are about two weeks old they are taken to the sea by their solicitous mothers, 
whose instinct makes them much more intelligent in matters of primary edu¬ 
cation than the average human parent. The young are taught to fish and to 
swim—that is, they are initiated into the life which they are to lead. Fully 
aware of the danger of exacting too much, the mother will, at reasonable intervals, 
take her cub upon her back, and doubtless affording them, in addition to 
rest, the delight which human children find in being borne aloft by some grown 
person, whose strength and power seems to it gigantic. The males fight for 
the selection and possession of as many wives as please their fancy, but once 
having settled this question of relationship, the marital obligations are strictly 
observed, and no seal undertakes to invade the domestic rights of another. 
The stronger males select the 
rocks, which they prefer for 
their inland residence, and the 
weaker must content them¬ 
selves with what is left; but 
after any seal has thus taken 
possession of its dwelling it 
has no occasion to fear in¬ 
trusion or expropriation on the 
part of the stronger or more 
cunning. 
The American who visits 
Mount Desert, or whom neces¬ 
sity or pleasure takes to San 
Francisco, can find much 
amusement in watching the an¬ 
tics and in studying the hab¬ 
its of the seal. He will find 
the rocks covered by families 
of seals , so that he is reminded 
of the squatter shanties which 
so abound in New York city. 
From time to time some seal hoodfd seal. 
who has pitched his tent on 
the very apex of some lofty rock may be seen leaping a sheer hundred 
feet into the sea, and then awkardly clambering up the steep cliff appar¬ 
ently for the excitement of another dive. Although usually good-natured and 
friendly in their relations with each other, seals will, at times other than when 
struggling for the possession of their lady-loves, find some grievance not appar¬ 
ent to the human observer, and will then exercise that right which civilized 
men have disused for the courts and the ballots—those “vicarious shillalahs,” 
as they have wittily been called. The seal is a great annoyance to the fisher¬ 
man, for in addition to its own expertness as a fisher, it will possess itself of 
the fish which may be in the fishermen’s seines, and leave him “ to hold the bag.” 
The Crested Seal, or Hooded Seal, was doubtless the creature which the 
mythologists celebrated as the Triton, for the male, who, contrary to human 
'Customs, wears the bonnet or hood, has sufficient resemblance to a cowled monk 
