Note 122 — Chapter X · AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
Reading edition
It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent possessed by these animals enables them to reach the breeding grounds at about the place where they left them the season previously: surely the nose of the fur-seal is endowed to a superlative degree with those organs of smell, and its range of appreciation in this respect must be very great.
I noticed in all sleeping and waking seals that the nasal apertures were never widely expanded; and that they were at intervals rapidly opened and closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath; the nostrils of the fur-seal are, as a rule, well opened when the animal is out of water, and remain so while it is on land.