Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/350

336 estimated at between five and six millions. The noise of this multitude is described as like the booming of a cataract, so loud as to warn vessels at sea of the proximity of land, and the smell as almost insupportable. The animal is covered with a long, flattened, moderately coarse hair, under which is a dark, long, fine, silky fur, the valuable seal-skin fur of the market.



Steller's sea-lion (Otaria Stelleri, Fig. 5) is a larger species, a full-grown male measuring twelve feet in length, and occasionally sixteen feet, and weighing a thousand pounds. It lives not only in remote and secluded places, like the northern species, but also by thickly inhabited coasts, where it enters the bays and rivers, and even plays around the shipping. It is much more timid than the