VARIETIES OF SEA LIONS.

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States Navy, who was detailed to accompany Mr. Elliott to Alaska has been laid before Congress. Lieutenant Maynard states that the Alaska Company are observing their contract, 100,000 seals are annually killed by them, and 12,000 by the natives for food, under the direction of the Government agent. The number is experimental, and Lieutenant Maynard is of opinion that the effect upon the increase or decrease of seal life upon the islands cannot be discovered for six or seven years from the making of the contract. He gives a chapter on the sea otter, the skin of which animal is ten times as valuable as the seal. He reports, as do others, that this animal is rapidly disappearing by the indiscriminate slaughter of the female and young otter, the constant harassing by hunters, and the use of fire-arms in their capture, and he indicates that prompt measures must be taken, or it will be too late to preserve the otter from extinction.

Mr. J. Willis Clarke gave a Lecture on Sea Lions before the Zoological Society, which was published in the "Contemporary Review" for Dec. 1875.

According to this naturalist, there are nine well authenticated species of sea lions, thus distributed in the North Pacific three, Otaria [Callorrhinus] ursinus, O. Gillespii, and O. stellerii; in the South Pacific, around Cape Horn, and in the South Atlantic as far north as Rio de la Plata, two species, O. jubata, and O. Falklandica; about the Cape of Good Hope and the adjacent Islands, one, 0. pusilla or antarctica; around Australia and New Zealand, two, O. Hookeri and O. lobata; and at Kerguelen's Land, one, 0. gazella.

SEA LIONS (Eumitopius [Otaria] stelleri, Mull.).—These animals are abundant on most of the rocky islands of Alaska. They appear in May, and remain until late in the fall. The males often weigh two or three tons. Their hide and oil are used for the same purpose as those of the walrus, though inferior in quality. The whiskers of the sea-lion are as large as a quill, and

278 FLESH AND BLUBBER OF FUR SEAL.

sometimes fifteen inches long. They are exported to China, the Chinese paying a high price for them to use as toothpicks. The gall is also disposed of in China, being used in the manufacture of silk.

The flesh of the fur seal and sea-lion serve the Aleuts for food, and their blubber for fuel. The flesh of the fur seal forms but a small portion of the body; the greater part is blubber, and this is more noticeable because of the thousands of carcases of seals which are scattered over the Aleutian Islands. If these were composed of a large part of muscular fibre, as is the case with the walrus, the decaying bodies would breed a pestilence. The flesh of a young fur seal, placed in running water overnight, and then broiled, is far from disagreeable-in fact, it tastes exactly like mutton-chop. The young sea-lion is said to be even better eating, and both present a marked contrast to the fetidity of the flesh of the hair seal (Phoca) of Norton Sound. The Aleuts make of the skin of the flippers boot soles, which are very durable.

The fat cut from the nearest carcase serves them for fuel. The blubber of the fur seal yields oil of the first quality, and is worth about two dollars a gallon; yet for many years hundreds of barrels have fertilised the hillsides, for want of some one to preserve it. Each seal will furnish half a gallon, which would give, for 100,000 seals, about 1,000 barrels of oil, worth at least £12,000; this has always been wasted. In fact, the oil is worth as much as the skins at the islands.*

Sea lions are unknown in the Atlantic except in the extreme south, though the Atlantic abounds in true seals, from which the sea lions differ in several particulars. The more obvious difference is the possession of external ears, which seals lack. They have besides a long, mobile, flexible neck, whereas in seals the neck is short and scarcely perceptible. Then their limbs are still available for locomotion on land, while those of

*Dall's "Alaska and its Resources."

NORTHERN FUR SEAL.

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seals have lost all power of supporting the body out of water. Lastly, they possess the fatal gift of under fur, which gives them their commercial importance, and threatens to cause their untimely extermination.

From time immemorial two species (Otaria [Eumitopius] stellerii and O. Gillespii) have inhabited an island in San Francisco Harbour. Protected by the civic authorities, they have multiplied enormously, threatening the entire destruction of the salmon once so plentiful in all Californian rivers.

Of the Arctic or Behring Sea species (Callorhinus ursinus, Gray) not less than six million skins have been obtained since 1741. The Hudson's Bay Company received between 1856 and 1866 upwards of 4,000.

They are killed by a blow on the back of the head with a heavy sharp-edged club. The Aleut then plunges his sharp knife into the heart, and with wonderful dexterity, by a few sweeps of his

280

SLAUGHTER OF FUR SEALS.

long weapon, separates the skin from the blubber to which it is attached. The nose and wrists are cut around, and the ears and tail left attached to the skin. When the operation is over the skin is of an oval shape, with four holes where the extremities protruded. These skins are then taken and laid in a large pile, with layers of salt between them; after becoming thoroughly salted they are done up, two together, in square bundles, and tied up with twine. They are then packed for transportation to London, where all the fur seals are dressed. (Dall's "Alaska.")

The claim of the North Pacific sea lions to public interest arises from the circumstance that eighty per cent. of the seal fur now supplied to the markets of the world comes from the islands of Behring's Sea, and the indications are that in a few years the Alaskan possessions of America will be the only source of this beautiful fur. Everywhere else the slaughter goes on without regard to system, age, or sex, and already many islands which used to furnish thousands of skins every year have been entirely depopulated.

Not less than a million skins were taken from the Island of Masafuera, off the coast of Chili. In two years, four hundred thousand skins were obtained from a small island near Australia. From the South Shetland Islands, three hundred and twenty thousand were taken in 1820 and 1821, males and females being slaughtered indiscriminately, and the young left to die. It is hardly necessary to add that, in a few years, this horrid and wasteful process wrought its own destruction.

The resorts of the sea lions of the north were discovered in 1786, and a Russian fur company at once established. For thirty years from eighty to ninety thousand skins a year were brought away, the killing being done without regard to sex or system. About 1817 it was observed that the animals had diminished in numbers. For twenty years more the wasteful slaughter went on, until but a tithe of the original number appeared. Then the slaughter was regulated, the number of skins

"ROOKERIES" OF THE FUR SEALS. 281

restricted, and the females left undisturbed. When the islands came into the possession of the United States, the system was substantially continued, with the result of giving them almost a monopoly of the entire seal fur trade. According to Mr. Elliott's calculation, as many as three million breeding seals annually congregate on the two islands, St. Paul and St. George, to which they resort; the yearlings and males under six years of age he sets down at two millions, making a population of upwards of five millions. Only young males are allowed to be killed, and the number is limited to one hundred thousand. Females are not molested, and no killing is permitted within several miles of the "rookeries," as the resting places of the females and their cubs are called.

When the time for killing arrives, usually in June, the killers select some "hauling ground" of the young males-for the old bulls do not allow them to associate with the females-and, armed with clubs, get between them and the sea. The animals, startled by the sight of the men and frightened by their shouts, scramble rapidly landwards, and are leisurely driven to the killing grounds. In favourable weather they can travel at the rate of half a mile an hour, the most effective implement for driving being an umbrella. At the killing ground they are allowed to rest awhile, after which the fittest are selected and killed with clubs, a single blow on the head being sufficient for each. The rest are allowed to return to the sea.

For many years the stiff coarse hair, which conceals the under fur, was plucked out by hand. It was finally discovered that the roots of the hair were more deeply seated than those of the fur, and that, by shaving the skin from the underside until the hair. roots were cut away, the hair could easily be brushed away, leaving the under fur intact, thus greatly simplifying and cheapening the work of preparing the skins. Naturally, the under fur is curly and of a light brown colour; but as the ladies prefer a darker shade, it is dyed, in which process the curls untwist and the fur