Page:Castaway on the Auckland Isles (IA castawayonauckla01musg).pdf/164

148 leave off sucking, and, with the cows, leave the places where they were suckled; and now all the seals keep in the water nearly altogether in the daytime, and in the night they are on shore. They do not appear to choose any particular place for sleeping in, further than taking shelter in the bush, or in the long grass close to the water. They do not go far from the water, and sleep in small mobs of six or eight together; never going on shore until after dark, and going into the water again at the very peep of day. Sometimes the same mob will sleep in the same place for several nights in succession, if they are not disturbed; it may be thus ascertained where they are to be found.

About this time (i.e., May), or shortly after beginning to breed, the cows are very much troubled with vomiting, when small pebbles are often disgorged, which are very likely snapped up when catching fish on the bottom, and would at any other time have been digested. I have picked up a number of very remarkable little stones (if they are stones, for I have not as yet been able to ascertain) which have been brought up from the deep in this manner. On one occasion I found a deposit of these curiosities six and a half feet below the surface of the earth—or, more strictly speaking, the decayed vegetable matter of which the place was composed; and some of them are particularly curious and pretty. And supposing that the accumulation of this decomposed vegetable matter is half the sixteenth of an inch (which is scarcely possible) every year, it is more than 2,500 years since they were brought up from the sea, and vomited there by a sea lioness. I would describe some of them, but as the matter is foreign to my subject I will at once return to it. I am inclined to think that these seals prey more upon small fish than large ones, and they very frequently eat crabs and mussels, and they will sometimes seize upon birds, such as the widgeon and duck; but they do not prey upon each other, neither will they eat anything that they find dead. Their greatest speed in the water does not