the hair pulled out. It is thus the
bachelors that have to yield up their skins.

That a wild animal may be slaughtered in so orderly a way, depends on
its peculiar mode of life.[368] For the sea-bears are found year after
year during summer at certain points projecting into the sea
(rookeries), where, collected in hundreds of thousands, they pass
several months without the least food. The males (oxen) come first to
the place, most of them in the month of May or at the beginning of June.
Combats of excessive violence, often with a deadly issue for one of the
parties, now arise regarding the space of about a hundred square feet,
which each seal-ox considers necessary for its home. The strongest and
most successful in fight retain the best places near the shore, the
weaker have to crawl farther up on land, where the expectation of
getting a sufficient number of spouses is not particularly great. The
fighting goes on with many feigned attacks and parades. At first the
contest concerns the proprietorship of the soil. The attacked therefore
never follows its opponent beyond the area it has once taken up, but
haughtily lays itself down, when the enemy has retired, in order in the
aims of sleep to collect forces for a new combat. The animal in such a
case grunts with satisfaction, throws itself on its back, scratches
itself with its fore-feet, looks after its toilet, or cools itself by
slowly fanning with one of its hind-feet, but it is always on the alert
and ready for a new fight until it is tired out and meets its match, and
is driven by it farther up from the beach. One of the most peculiar
traits of these animals is that during their stay on land they
unceasingly use their hind-paws as fans, and sometimes also as parasols.
Such fans may on a warm day be in motion at the same time by the hundred
thousand at a "rookery."

[Illustration: SEA-BEARS Male, Female, and Young. (From a water colour
painting by H.W. Elliott.) ]

In the middle of June the females come up from the sea. At the
water's edge they are received in a very accommodating way by some
strong oxen that have succeeded in securing for themselves places
next the shore, and now are bent by fair means or foul on annexing
the fair for their harem. But scarcely is the female that has come
up out of the water established with seal-ox No. 1, when this ox
rushes towards a new beauty on the surface of the water. Seal-ox No.
2 now stretches out his neck and without cere