Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1886 — Seal Puppies. [ARTICLE]

Seal Puppies.

Alaska is the favorite home of the fin seal. About the middle of May they gather on ■ the various islands of that interesting country in great numbers. Soon after landing the females begin to find their young, of which they have but one; at great intervals twins. As soon as the little fellow is born on the" Hand he begins to call for his mother with a husky, strange voice, like the bleating of a lamb. He also begins to puddle about with his eyes wide open, evidently looking for fefreshments. The pup Tor the first three months or so is black as jet, with two little white' spots just back of his fore-arm. When first born they are aliout one foot to fourteen inches in length, and weighing from three to four pounds. The •mother never fondles or caresses her offspring, but leaves it in the sand with hundreds and thousands of. other puppies, and goes away to the sea to bathe and catch fish for food. The little puppy does not even know his own mother from any other, but is so constituted that he keeps up that frequent bleating, so that when his mother returns she instantly recognizes the voice of her own from all the rest, and nurses it. Early in August the pups begin to learn to swim, for during the first fifty or sixty days of their life they can swim about as well as a stone. Some naturalists aver that their mothers drive them down into the water and teach them the art of swimming. This is not true. After they have attained the age of six weeks or. two months they go oi their own choice down to the margin of the surf, where the water rushes out over them, and in turn leaves them on solid ground. If a puppy happens to be washed off his feet and carried out

beyond his depth, he becomes greatly alarmed, opens wide his mouth and big eyes, and struggles manfully for the shore. Many of them are drowned in this way. This kind of practice is kept up till the little fellows are able to swim in all sorts of ways, diving, twisting, and floating on their backs till they are completely tired out, when they crawl out on the sand and curl down for a nap. When this is done, usually occupying less than an hour, they are at it again. The mother never takes the slightest supervision of her children’s swimming or anything else, except to cotte out of the sea at intervals and give him nurse. About the middle of October the puppies completely shed their black hair and take on a beautiful steel-gray hair with a bright brown under fur. This is their sea-going coat. Early in winter they leave Alaska in small squads, and do not see land again until their return the next May. They # gp, seemingly by common consent, td ‘the south, and are soon lost in the vast and wide ocean, where they spread themselves out all over the North Pacific from Oregon to Japan. They rest and sleep in the water with the greatest comfort from November to May, when those of them fortunate enough to escape the shark and other enemies return again to the same spot where they were born, having been on a voyage of seven months and thousands of miles on the briny deep.— Rambler.