Beyond his tusks, and the fact that by sleeping many weeks on the ice in autumn he reminds us of the bears, the walrus’s life is not very interesting. They live in large shoals in the Arctic sea, climbing the rocks and ice with the help of their tusks, which they drive into the crevices and so haul themselves up. During the colder times just before our own, they came down into much lower latitudes than now, and we find their bones as far south as England in Europe and Virginia in America, and even in our day one has been seen off the west coast of Skye; but we know very little of their daily life or how they bring up their young ones. Of Fur Seals and Sea Lions, however, we know a good deal, and a singular history it is. They spend the greater part of the year in huge shoals in the sea, rising and falling, gambolling and diving in the water, feeding on the fish, and probably migrating from colder to warmer seas in the winter from either pole. But the interesting time of their life is in the spring, when the northern eared seals have often been watched as they come to the shores of the Aleutian Isles to bring up their families. For then begins the fight which seals shall get the most wives. Early in May the fathers begin to arrive--strong old seals, which have gone through the battle many years before and know the rules. They are huge fellows six or seven feet long, with enormous eye-teeth and cutting teeth next to them, which together grip like a vice. They come up at first singly and then in greater numbers, swimming powerfully and laying hold of the rocks with their flippers so as to haul themselves up on land, taking the best positions they can find on the edge of the water to watch for the arrival of the mothers. Yet still more and more fathers arrive as time goes on, and these are obliged to go farther inland, for all the shore stations are soon occupied, and each sea lion defends his own plot of ground with tooth and flipper. [Illustration: Fig. 82. Sea Lions gathered on one of the Pribylov Islands, watching for wives.] Thus, in about a month’s time, from the shore right inland, the whole island is covered with male seals. And now the mothers arrive, coming to the islands that their little ones may be born. They are very much smaller, not much more than four feet long, lighter in colour than the fathers, gentle and inoffensive; and as they swim up to the island each father seal tries, by coaxing, pulling, and tugging, to persuade a mate to come on to his rock. If he succeeds he has then to keep her, for the sea lions behind, which cannot reach the sea, are on the watch to steal her.