Note 109 — Chapter X · AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.

Those extremely heavy adult males which arrive first in the season and take their stations on the rookeries, are so fat that they do not exhibit a wrinkle or a fold of the skins enveloping their blubber-lined bodies. Most of this fatty deposit is found around the shoulders and the neck, though a warm coat of blubber covers all the other portions of the body save the flippers. This blubber-thickening of the neck and chest is characteristic of the adult males only, which are, by its provisions, enabled to sustain the extraordinary protracted fasting periods incident to their habit of life and reproduction.

When those superlatively fleshy bulls first arrive, a curious body-tremor seems to attend every movement which the animals make on land; their fat appears to ripple backward and forward under their hides, like waves. As they alternate with their flippers in walking, the whole form of the “see-catchie” fairly shakes as a bowl full of jelly does when agitated on the table before us.