The natural food of the seal is believed to be small fishes and kelp, that prolific product of the ocean which is found floating in nearly all latitudes, being torn from its rocky bed by storms and carried everywhere on the tides and currents. The females seldom give birth to more than one at a time, and though they are naturally a very docile animal, the mother will fight savagely for her young. The old males weigh from two to three hundred pounds each, when they first land, soon gathering a harem about them of a dozen females or more, and permitting no other bull to approach the circle. There are occasional elopements among the females, enticed away by young bachelor seals, who have no family ties to occupy them, but as a rule the females remain loyal, at least during the season. The full grown male reaches seven feet in length, and the female about five feet; the latter averages about a hundred pounds in weight, the former weigh twice as much and often more. Nature seems to produce a much larger number of females than of males, besides which the law protects the female from the hunter. The killing of these animals on St. Paul and St. George is nearly all done in six weeks of each year, say from the 10th of June to the 20th of July. As regards the fur, a seal at four years of age is thought to yield the best, and is therefore considered to be at that time in his prime. It is the males of this age, accordingly, which are selected for slaughter. So numerous are these animals that the shore is often black with them, three or four thousand being in sight within the space of a hundred square rods. The pups are full of playfulness, rolling and tumbling about like a litter of kittens. The rule not to kill the old bulls and female young is a necessary precaution to prevent the extermination of the race, which indiscriminate slaughter has probably done in so many other places. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI. Enormous Slaughter of Seals.—Manner of Killing.—Battles between the Bulls.—A Mythical Island.—The Seal as Food.—The Sea-Otter.—A Rare and Valuable Fur.—The Baby Sea-Otter.—Great Breeding-Place of Birds.—Banks of the Yukon River.—Fur-Bearing Land Animals.—Aggregate Value of the Trade.—Character of the Native Race. Surgeon J. B. Parker tells us in a published article upon the fur-seals of Alaska, that just previous to the transfer of the country to this government five hundred thousand sealskins were being taken from these islands annually, though it was pretended by the Russians that they restricted the number to one quarter of this total. The strange instinct of the animals which causes them to return yearly in such marvelous numbers to be slaughtered is a mystery difficult to solve. Persistent cruelty exercised towards them for a century has not disturbed their affection for this chosen breeding-place of their ancestors in Behring Sea.