It is a curious thing about these little seal pups that though they are going to spend their lives in the water, they don't like the idea of it at all, and have to be forced into the water by their mothers, and taught to swim just as though they were little boys and girls. Baby seals have nearly white fur when they are born, and, strange to say, until this coat falls off and the dark one comes, their mothers never attempt to take them to the water. The seals are not the gentle things they appear to be, with their soft brown eyes and their sleek coats. On the contrary, they are very fierce and warlike if any attempt is made to interfere with their families. When the fathers first reach the beach, and set about making the home ready for their families, they will not allow any of the young bachelor seals to land near the rookeries. They force them either to remain in the water, or to go to the highlands above the village. The bachelor seals think they have as much right to a comfortable home as the older seals, and so they fight hard to enter the villages. This fighting keeps up the whole summer while the seals are out of the water, and those who have seen these battles say that "night and day, the sound of them is like that of an approaching railway train." So steadily does the fighting continue that the old seals have no time to eat, and during the three or four months they stay with their families on the beaches they never take a mouthful of food. At the end of the time, when they leave the rookeries, they are thin and miserable, and covered with battle scars. The killing of the seals should be carefully arranged with a knowledge of these habits. The proper rules are that no mother seals, baby seals, or father seals shall be killed, but that the hunters shall watch until the badly behaved bachelor seals have got tired with fighting, and gone up above the rookeries to rest. The hunters ought then to creep in between the seals and the water, and making a noise to frighten them drive them inland. Every hunter should be armed with a wooden club, and when he has chosen a seal that seems to be about two or three years old, he should strike it with this club and kill it. In this way a large number of seals can be obtained without disturbing the rest of the flock. The manner of killing that the United States complains of is that the hunters creep into the rookeries and kill the mother seals, leaving the poor little pups to die by thousands for want of their mothers' care. Because of this wholesale killing of the seals, there are few young seals left to grow up in the place of those that have been taken away, and so after a time there will be no more flocks at all. The sealskin which we use is made out of the under fur of the animal. The seals which are caught for fur have a very thick, velvet-like undercoat, covered with a quantity of long hair, which has to be removed from the skins before they can be used for market.