126 ALASKA. 



Stations on tbe rocks, wliicli tliej' immediately take up after 

 coming ashore. 



I am not able to say authoritatively that these animals come 

 back and take up the same position on tbe breeding-grounds 

 occupied by them during the preceding season; from my 

 knowledge of their action and habit, and from what I have 

 learned of the natives, I should say that very few, if any of 

 them, make such a selection and keep these places year after 

 year. One old bull was pointed out to me on the lieef Gar- 

 butch llookery as being known to the natives as a regular vis- 

 itor at, close by, or on the same rock every season during the 

 past three years, but he failed to re-appear on the fourth 5 but 

 if these animals came each to a certain place and occupied it 

 regularly, season after season, 1 think the natives here would 

 know it definitely ; as it is, they do not. I think it very likely, 

 however, that the older bulls come back to the same rookery- 

 ground wiiere they spent the previous season, but take up their 

 l)Ositions on it just as the circumstances attending their arrival 

 will permit, such as fighting other seals which have arrived be- 

 fore them, &c. 



With the object of testing this matter, the Russians, during 

 the early part of their possession, cut off the ears from a given 

 number of young male seals driven up for that piupose from 

 one of the rookeries, and the result was that cropped seals were 

 found on nearly all the different rookeries or " hauling-grounds'^ 

 on the islands after. The same experiment was made by agents 

 two years ago, who had the left ears taken off from a hundred 

 young males which were found on Lukannon Rookery, Saint 

 Paul's Island ; of these the natives last year found two on No- 

 vashtosh-nah Rookery, ten miles north of Lukannon, and two 

 or three from English Bay and Tolstoi Rookery, six miles west 

 by water; one or two were taken on Saint George's Island, thir- 

 ty-six miles to the southeast, and not one from Lukannon was 

 found among those that were driven from there; and, proba- 

 bly, had all the young males on the two ishmds been driven up 

 and examined, the rest would have been found distributed quite 

 equally all around, although the natives say that they think 

 the cutting off of the animal's ear gives the water such access 

 to its head as to cause its death; this, however, I think re- 

 quires confirmation. These experiments would tend to prove 

 that when the seals approach the islands in the spring, they 

 have nothing but a general instinctive appreciation of the fit- 



