ALA.SKA INDUSTRIES. 



101 



The increase or diminution op the seal life, past, present, 

 AND PROSPECTIVE. — One stereotyped question has been addressed to 

 me universally by my friends since my return, first in 1873, from the 

 seal islands. The query is: "At the present rate of killing the seals, 

 it will not be long ere they are exterminated; how much longer will 

 they last? " Mj^ answer is now as it was then, "Provided matters are 

 conducted on the seal islands in the future as they are to-day, 100,000 

 male seals under the age of 5 years and over 1, may be safely taken 

 every year from the Pribilof Islands, without the slightest injury to 

 the regular birth rates, or natural increase thereon; provided, also, 

 that the fur seals are not visited by any plague, or pests, or any 

 abnormal cause for their destruction, which might be beyond the con- 





-" HIGH Plateau ^v**'~ 



.•Q^itM^I^ 



GREAT EASTERN 

 Scale; 



IS 



trol of men; and to which, like any other great bod^^ of aniriial life, 

 they must ever be subjected to the danger of." ^ 



The thought of what a, deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congre- 

 gations ot Fmnepedia was one that was constant in my mind when on the ground 

 and among them. I have found in the Britif^h Annals (Fleming s) , on page 17, an 

 extract trom. the notes of Dr. Trail: '• In 1S33 I inquired for my old acquaintances, 

 tlie seals ot the Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years 

 belore they had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last few 

 months begun to reappear. * * * About fifty vears ago multitudes of their 

 carcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shet- 

 land, and numbers were found at sea in a sickly str.te." This note of Trail is the 

 only record which I can find of a fatal epidemic among the seals. It is not reason- 

 able to ruppose that the Pribilof rookeries have never suffered from distempers in 

 the past, or are not to in the future, simply because no occasion seems to have 

 arisen during the comparatively brief period of their human domination. 



