The labor of locating and maintaining a position on the rookery is real, terrible and serious business for these bulls which come in last, and it is so all the time to those males that occupy the water-line of the breeding grounds. A constantly sustained fight between the new-comers and the occupants goes on morning, noon, and night, without cessation, frequently resulting in death to one, or even both, of the combatants. The “seecatchie” under six years of age, although hovering about the sea-margins of the breeding grounds, do not engage in much fighting there; it is the six and seven year old males, ambitious and flushed with a full sense of their reproductive ability, that swarm out and do battle with the older males of these places. A young male of this latter class is, however, no match for any fifteen or twenty year old bull, provided that an old “seecatchie” retains his teeth; for, with these weapons, his relatively harder thews and sinews give him the advantage in almost every instance among the hundreds of combats that I have witnessed. These trials of strength between the old and the young are incessant until the rookeries are mapped out; since, by common consent, the males of all classes recognize the coming of the females. After their arrival and settlement over the whole extent of the breeding grounds, about July 15th at the latest, very little fighting takes place. Many of those bulls exhibit wonderful strength and desperate courage. I marked one veteran at Gorbatch, who was the first to take up his position early in May, and that position, as usual, directly on the water-line. This male seal had fought at least forty or fifty desperate battles, and beaten off his assailants every time—perhaps nearly as many different seals each of which had coveted his position—when the fighting season was over (after the cows are mostly all hauled up), I saw him still there, covered with scars and frightfully gashed—raw, festering, and bloody, one eye gouged out—but lording it bravely over his harem of fifteen or twenty females, which were all huddled together around him on the same spot of his first location. This fighting between the old and adult males (for none others fight) is mostly, or rather entirely, done with the mouth. The opponents seize one another with their teeth, and thus clinching their jaws, nothing but the sheer strength of the one and the other tugging to escape can shake them loose; then, that effort invariably leaves an ugly wound, for the sharp canines tear out deep gutters in the skin and furrows in the blubber, or shred the flippers into ribbon-strips.