There is a bit of live natural history out here in the sea in front of
me that is new and interesting. A bunch of about a dozen hair seals have
their rendezvous in the unstable waves just beyond the breakers, and
keep together there week after week. To the naked eye they seem like a
group of children sitting there on a hidden bench of rock, undisturbed
by the waves that sweep over them. Their heads and shoulders seem to
show above the water, and they appear to be having a happy time.
Now and then one may be seen swimming about or lifted up in a wall of
green-blue transparent water, or leaping above the wrinkled surface in
the exuberance of its animal spirits. I call them children of the sea,
until I hear their loud barking, and then I think of them as dogs or
hounds of the sea. Occasionally I hear their barking by night when it
has a half-muffled, smothered sound.
They are warm-blooded, air-breathing animals, and there seems something
incongruous in their being at home there in the cold briny deep--badgers
or marmots that burrow in the waves, wolves or coyotes that hunt their
prey in the sea.
Their progenitors were once land animals, but Darwinism does not tell us
what they were. The whale also was once a land animal, but the testimony
of the rocks throws no light upon its antecedents. The origin of any new
species is shrouded in the obscurity of whole geological periods, and
the short span of human life, or of the whole human history, gives us no
adequate vantage-ground from which to solve the problem.
I can easily believe that these hair seals are close akin to the dog.
They have five digits; they bolt their food like dogs; their sense of
smell is said to be very acute, though how it could serve them in the
sea does not appear. The young are born upon the land and enter the
water very reluctantly.
This seal is easily tamed. It has the intelligence of the dog and
attaches itself to its master as does the dog. Its sense of direction
and locality is very acute. This group of seals in front of me, day
after day, and week after week, returns to the same spot in the
ever-changing waters, without the variation of a single yard, so far as
I can see. The locality is purely imaginary. It is a love tryst, and it
seems as if some sixth sense must guide them to it. Locality is as
unreal in the sea as in the sky, but these few square yards of shifting
waters seem as real to these seals as if they were a granite ledge. They
keep massed there on the water at that particular point, with their
flippers protruding above the surface, as if they were as free from
danger as so many picnickers. Yet something attracts them to this
particular place. I know of no other spot along the coast for a hundred
miles or more where the seals congregate as they do here. What is the
secret of it? Evidently it is a question of security from their enemies.
At this point the waves break much farther out than usual, which
indicates a hidden reef or bench of rocks, and comparatively shallow
water. This would prevent their enemies, sharks and killer whales, from
stealing up beneath them and pulling them down. I do not hear their
barking in the early part of the night, but long before morning their
half-muffled baying begins. Old fishermen tell me that they retire for
the night to the broad belts of kelp that lie a hundred yards or more
out to sea. Doubtless the beds of kelp also afford them some protection
from their enemies. The fishermen feel very bitter toward them on
account of the fish they devour, and kill them whenever opportunity
offers. Often when I lie half asleep in the small hours of the morning,
I seem to see these amphibian hounds pursuing their quarry on the
unstable hills and mountains of the sea, and giving tongue at short
intervals, as did the foxhounds I heard on the Catskills in my youth.
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