2 NATURAL SCIENCE [January 



main herd ; and, thirdly, the females, all of whom of two years 

 old and upwards are eligible for breeding. The old males land 

 on the islands first and take up stations along the shore ; when the 

 females arrive they are immediately seized by the males, each of 

 whom, by force or blandishments, collects a number of females into 

 a harem of, on an average, about eighteen individuals. During the 

 summer all the females are fertilised, and owing to the peculiar 

 bilobed structure of the uterus each female can give birth to a pup 

 every year, the opposite sides being used in alternate years. Hence, 

 as the period of gestation is 355 days, it follows that, except for 

 ten days in the summer, every female seal above two years old is 

 always pregnant. Moreover, owing to the extraordinary jealousy of 

 these animals, no mother-seal will give suck to any pup except her 

 own. Hence, if a mother be killed between the birth of her pup 

 and the end of October or beginning of November, when the young 

 are weaned, her pup is inevitably starved to death. Thus every 

 female seal killed between June and October, both months inclusive, 

 means the deatli of three seals — a mother, a pup, and a foetus. At 

 any other time of the year every female killed means the loss of two 

 lives. At present there is a close time for seals in the Eastern 

 Behring Sea for May, June and July. A healthy pup takes ten 

 days in which to starve to death, and it is, therefore, very significant 

 that after the middle of August vast numbers of young pups are 

 found on the Pribylov Islands starved to death. It is admitted by 

 both sides that many, possibly a great majority, of the deaths of 

 these pups are due to the killing of the mothers at sea. Hence the 

 Americans say that the close time ought to be extended at least 

 until the end of October, a decision which would practically mean 

 the end of pelagic sealing. 



It may be retorted that if the Canadians are to be debarred 

 from killing fur-seals at sea the Americans ought to be prevented 

 from killing them on shore. But the conditions are totally different. 

 On shore only non-breeding males with perfect skins are killed. 

 No females or breeding males are taken. But at sea no such selec- 

 tion is possible ; the sex cannot be determined until the seal is 

 killed. Many of the seals escape with fatal wounds, and as the 

 females are less active than the males and are often hampered by 

 the presence of their young, they are more easily captured. Hence 

 the majority of the seals killed at sea are females. The economic 

 value of the pelagic seal industry is now insignificant, and as it 

 appears to be admitted by both sides that the herds of fur-seals are 

 being greatly reduced in numbers by the excessive killing at sea of 

 female seals and the consequent starvation of nearly 20 per cent, of 

 the young, it is to be hoped that effective measures may be taken to 

 prevent this inhuman and wasteful slaughter. 



