ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 441 



(c) If the male seal can not become a bull (seecatchie) earlier than the fifth year, 

 then, as Button remarks, "animals can live seven times the length of the period 

 required for their maturity.'' Therefore a seecatch can not live less than thirty 

 years and a female not less than twenty-eight.' 



VENIAMINOV'S BELIEF THAT FEMALES CAN NOT BEAR YOUNG UNTIL FOUR VEALS OLD. 



Taking the opinion of Buffon for ground in saying that animals do not come to 

 their full maturity until one-seventh of their lives has passed, it goes also to prove 

 that the female seal can not bear young before her fourth year. 



It is, without doubt, a fact that female seals do not begin to bear young before 

 their tifth year, i. e., the next four years after the one of their birth, and not in the 

 third or fourth year. That, however, is not the rule, but the exception. To make 

 it more appai'ent that females can not bear young in their third year, consider 2-year- 

 old females, and compare them with seecatchie (adult bulls) and cows (adult females), 

 and it will be evident to all that this is impossible. 



Do the females bear young every year; and how often in their lives do they bring 

 forth? 



HIS DOUBTS ON THE SUBJECT. 



To settle this question is very difScult, for it is impossible to make any observa- 

 tioDS upon their movements. But I think that the females in their younger years 

 (or prime) bring forth every year, and as they get older, every other year. Thus, 

 according to people accustomed to them, they may each bring forth in their whole 

 lives from 10 to 15 young and even more. This opinion is founded on the fact that 

 never (except in one year, 1832) have an excessive number of females been seen 

 without young; that cows not pregnant hardly ever come to the Pribilov Islands; 

 that such females can not be seen every year. As to how large a number of females 

 do not bear, according to the opinions and personal observations of the old jieople, 

 the following may be depended upon with confidence: Not more than one-fifth of 

 the mature or '•eft'ective" females are without young. But to avoid erroneous im- 

 pressions or conflicting statements between others and myself, I would state that 

 I have had but one season {"■trayt") in which to personally observe and consider 

 the multiplication of seals. 



HIS THOUGHTS ON BIRTH OF PUPS. 



There is one more very important question in the consideration of the breeding or 

 the increase of seals, and that is, of the number of young seals born in one year how 

 many are males? and is the number of males always the same in proportion to the 

 females ? 



Judging from the holhischickie accumulated from the zapooska in 1822-1824 on 

 the ishind of St. Paul and in 1826-27 on the island of St. George, the number of 

 young males was widely variable. For example, on the island of St. Paul, in three 

 years 11,000 seals were spared, and in the following three years there were killed 

 7,000, i. e., about two-thirds of the number saved. Opposed to this, on the island 

 of St. George, from 8,500 seals spared in two years less than 3,000 were taken, hardly 

 one-third. 



Why this irregularity? Why should more young males be born at one time and 

 at another less? Or, why should there be years in which many cows do not bear 

 young? 



According to the belief of the people here I think that of the number of seals born 

 every year, half are males and as many females (i. e., the oilier half). 



To demonstrate the above-mentioned conditions of seal life table No. 1 has been 

 formed of the number of seals annually killed on the Pribilov Islands from 1817 to 1838 

 (when this work was ended). 



From this it will be seen that — 



(1) No single successive year presents a good number of seals killed as compared 

 with the previous year ; the number is always less. 



(2) The annual number of seals killed was not in a constant ratio. 



'This remark is sustained by the observation of old men, and especially by one of 

 the best Creoles, Shiesneekov, who was on the island of St. Paul in 1817, and who 

 knows of one seecatch (known by a bald head) which in that time had already a 

 large herd of cows or females, surrounded and hunted by a like number of females 

 and strong, savage old bulls. Therefore it may be safely thought that this bull did 

 not get his growth until his fifth year, and at this time he could not have been less 

 than ten years old. And this same bull came every year to the island and the same 

 place for fifteen years in succession up to 1832, and it was only in the later years 

 that his harem grew smaller and smaller in number. 



