FOOTNOTES:
[107] The seal-life on the Pribylov Islands may be classified under the following heads, namely: (1) The fur-seal, Cattorhinus ursinus, the “kautickie” of the Russians; (2) the sea-lion, Eumetopias stelleri, the “seevitchie” of the Russians; (3) the hair-seal, Phoca vitulina, the “nearhpahsky” of the Russians; (4) the walrus, Odobænus obesus, the “morsjee” of the Russians.
[108] The inconsequential numbers of the hair-seal around and on the Pribylov Islands seem to be characteristic of all Alaskan waters and the northwest coast; also, the phocidæ are equally scant on the Asiatic littoral margins. Only the following four species are known to exist throughout the entire extent of that vast marine area, viz.:
Phoca vitulina—Everywhere between Bering Straits and California.
Phoca fœtida—Plover Bay, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim mouth, and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea; Cape Seartze Kammin, Arctic Ocean, to Point Barrow.
Erignathus barbatus—Kamchatkan coast, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim mouth and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.
Histriophoca equestris—Yukon mouth and coast south to Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.
[109] Those extremely heavy adult males which arrive first in the season and take their stations on the rookeries, are so fat that they do not exhibit a wrinkle or a fold of the skins enveloping their blubber-lined bodies. Most of this fatty deposit is found around the shoulders and the neck, though a warm coat of blubber covers all the other portions of the body save the flippers. This blubber-thickening of the neck and chest is characteristic of the adult males only, which are, by its provisions, enabled to sustain the extraordinary protracted fasting periods incident to their habit of life and reproduction.
When those superlatively fleshy bulls first arrive, a curious body-tremor seems to attend every movement which the animals make on land; their fat appears to ripple backward and forward under their hides, like waves. As they alternate with their flippers in walking, the whole form of the “see-catchie” fairly shakes as a bowl full of jelly does when agitated on the table before us.
[110] The distances at sea, away from the Pribylov Islands, in which fur-seals are found during the breeding season, are very considerable. Scattered records have been made of seeing large bands of them during August as far down the northwest coast as they probably range at any season of the year, viz., well out at sea in the latitude of Cape Flattery, 47° to 49° south latitude. In the winter and spring, up to middle of June, all classes are found here spread out over wide areas of ocean. Then by June 15th they will have all departed, the first and the latest, en route for the Pribylov Islands. Then, when seen again in this extreme southern range, I presume the unusually early examples of return toward the end of August are squads of the yearlings of both sexes, for this division is always the last to land on and the first to leave the Seal Islands annually.