Cows have very little reserve energy and must return to the water every two or three days, leaving their nursing pups ashore. On her return from one of these feeding expeditions, a cow goes straight to her own pup among the thousands on the rocky beach. Presumably she locates it by the odor. Few animals grow more rapidly than the seal pup. Within a few weeks after birth it is almost as large as its mother. This is an essential provision of nature, for it must have sufficient size and strength to care for itself in the open sea, once the southward migration starts. It is fully the size of the mother when it comes back the next year. There is an old idea that seal pups must be taught to swim. This is denied by government observers at the Pribiloff breeding grounds. When thrown into the water for the first time they swim ashore without difficulty. They will not, however, venture into the sea voluntarily but must be pushed off the rocks by the mothers. St. George and St. Paul islands are the only two spots under the American flag, except for certain atomic energy and military installations, which are absolutely barred to visitors without special government permits. These, as a rule, are given only to scientists studying the behavior of the seals. On each island there is an Aleut village whose inhabitants attend to the butchering of the animals each summer. This is confined entirely to three-year-old males who congregate by themselves. The only other killing permitted is by Aleuts along the coast for whom sealing is the traditional means of livelihood, but this now is so restricted that the annual toll is very small. The sealing must be done from an open boat, use of firearms is prohibited, and the Aleuts cannot be under contract to furnish skins. _Monsters With Buzz Saws_ “But if, retaining sense and sight, we could shrink into living atoms and plunge under water, of what a world of wonder would we form part. We would find this fairy kingdom peopled with the strangest creatures—creatures that swim with their hair, have ruby eyes blazing deep in their necks, with telescopic limbs that now are withdrawn wholly into their bodies and now stretched out to many times their own length. Here are some riding at anchor, moored by delicate threads spun out from their own toes. There are others flashing in glass armor, bristling with sharp spikes or ornamented with bosses and flowing curves; while fastened to a green stem is an animal convulvulus that by some invisible power draws a never-ceasing stream of victims into its gaping cup and tears them to death with hooked jaws deep down in its own body.”—_The Rotifera_ by C. T. Hudson and P. H. Goose, London, 1886.