A.LASKA INDUSTRIES. 47 



duties and the grave responsibilities before them in fighting for and 

 maintaining their positions in the rookeries. 



The first arrivals are not always the oldest bulls, but may be said 

 to be the finest and most ambitious of their class. They are full 

 grown and able to hold their places on the rookeries or the breeding 

 flats, which they immediately take up after coming ashore. Their 

 method of landing is to come collectively to those breeding grounds 

 where they passed the prior season; but I am not able to say authori- 

 tatively, nor do I believe it, stronglj^ as it has been urged b^^ many 

 careful men who were with me on the islands, that these animals come 

 back to and take up the same position on their breeding grounds that 

 they individually occupied when there last year. From mj^ knowl- 

 edge 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 selec- 

 tion and keep these i)laces year after year. Even did the seal itself 

 intend to come directly from the sea to that spot on the rookery which 

 it left last summer, what could it do if it came to that rookery margin 

 a little late, and found that another " see-catch " had occupied its 

 ground? The bull could do nothing. It would either have to die in 

 its tracks, if it persisted in attaining this supposed objective point, 

 or do what undoubtedly it does do — seek the next best locality which 

 it can attain adjacent. 



One old " see-catch" was pointed out to me at the Gorbatch section 

 of the Reef rookery as an animal that was long known to the natives 

 as a regular visitor, close by or on the same rock, every season dur- 

 ing the past three years. They called him "Old John," and they said 

 they knew him because he had one of his posterior digits missing, bit- 

 ten off, perhaps, in a combat. I saw him in 1872, and made cai-eful 

 drawings of him in order that I might recognize his individuality 

 should he api^ear again in the following year, and when that time 

 rolled by I found him not; he failed to reappear, and the natives 

 acquiesced in his absence. Of course it was impossible to say that he 

 was dead, when there were 10,000 rousing, fighting bulls to the right, 

 left, and below us, under our eyes, for we could not approach -for 

 inspection. Still, if these animals came each to a certain place in any 

 general fashion, or as a rule, I think there would be no difficulty in 

 recognizing the fact; the natives certainly would do so; as it'is, they 

 do not. I think it very likely, however, tliat the older bulls come 

 back to the same common rookery ground where they spent the pre- 

 vious season ; but they are obliged to take up tlieir j)osition on it just 

 as the circumstances attending their arrival will permit, such as find- 

 ing other seals which have arrived before them, or of being whii3ped 

 out by stronger rivals from their old stands. 



It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Russians 

 themselves, with the object of testing this mooted query, during the 

 later years of their ijossession of the islands, drove uj) a number of 

 young males from Lukannon, cut off their ears, and turned them out 

 to sea again. The following season, when the droves came in from 

 the hauling grounds to the slaughtering fields, quite a number of 

 those cropped seals were in the drives, but instead of being found all 

 at one place, the place from whence they were driven the j^ear before, 

 they were scattered examples of croppies from every point on the 

 island. The same experiment was again made by our people in 1870 

 (the natives having told them of this ijrior undertaking), and they 

 went also to Lukannon, drove wp 100 young males, cut off their left 

 ears, and set them free in turn. Of this number, during the summer 



