SEA LIONS ON THE FARALLONE ISLANDS.
Their voice is said to be a deep and grand roar, and when in mass has been likened to the howling of a tempest. The males come to these islands in the beginning of May, and the females a month later. The young are soon born, and at birth average twenty to twenty-five pounds, and two feet long, and then are of a dark chocolate-brown colour, with great watery grey-blue eyes. They shed their coat in October and become lighter, but do not precisely resemble their parents until they grow more adult.
This animal being destitute of fur, its skin is of little value; but their hides, their fat, their flesh, their sinews, and intestines, are all useful to the Aleutian islanders. The last, the throat-linings, and the skin of the flippers, are tanned into excellent leather, and both waterproof coats and the natives’ boots (tarbosars) are made out of them. Oil-vessels are made from the stomachs, the sinews are used for threads for binding their skin-canoes, and to the flesh of this species there is given a decided preference.
Steller’s Sea Lion has a wider distribution, probably, than O. ursina, and stretches around Kamstchatka and the Asiatic coast to the Kurile Islands. Moreover, on the American coast as far as California they are occasionally met with. Indeed, one of the sights at San Francisco is the “Ocean House,” a large hotel opposite the Seal Rocks at the mouth of the bay, whence a good view is obtained of a “rookery” of Sea Lions, now rigidly preserved by the American Government. They also inhabit the Farallone Islands about thirty miles from San Francisco.
The natives of Kamstchatka, to the coast of Siberia, capture the Sea Lions differently from the Pribyloff Islanders. In the summer months, Salmon swarm at the mouths of the rivers, the Seals following and preying on them. Strong wide-meshed nets, made of Seal-thong, are staked in a curve open to the confluence of the stream. The fish find a free passage, but the pursuing Seals become entangled, and the natives in flat-bottomed skin-boats approach and despatch the victims with rude bone implements. In the spring and fall they capture them on the floating ice, and during winter watch for their rising out of their breathing-holes to rest awhile, while the hunter deals destruction from behind a snow-bank or ice-cake. These natives convert the prepared hide for the Dog and Reindeer sledges and other purposes, and the blubber is a godsend.
GILLIESPIE’S HAIR SEAL,[211] OR SCHLEGEL’S JAPANESE OTARY.—This animal also inhabits the bays and islands of the Californian coast, but the first good account of it came from the pen of Professor Schlegel, of Leyden, in his “Fauna Japonica,” though, curiously enough, he confounded it with Steller’s Sea Lion. It undoubtedly frequents the Japanese coasts, and, possibly, other spots in the North Pacific. Dr. Macbain, in describing a skull from California, showed its specific distinction. Indeed, from its having one pair less of upper molars, a narrow muzzle and facial profile, and great skull-crest, it has been placed by Gill and others in a separate genus (Zalophus). But as before indicated, we prefer to consider the whole of these Sea Lions as belonging to Otaria. The colour of this animal much resembles that of the last, or slightly more of a pale brownish-grey, underneath yellowish, but also darker in the limbs. The sexes approach each other in this respect. It is smaller in size than O. Stelleri, the largest known male being little over six feet long, and the female relatively smaller.
PALATE OF HOOKER’S SEA BEAR.
