466 RESULTS. 



of Bering Sea, except females. The male seals are all at the breeding 

 islands, either guarding their harems or waiting the coming of the 

 females. Ninety-five per cent of all the seals killed dining summer 

 and autumn in the Bering are females. 



Thomas Mowat, esq., inspector of fisheries for British Columbia, in 

 his report to the governor-general of Canada, says that only 1 per cent 

 of the Bering collection are pups. 



The female seals hilled in the Bering are either on their way to give 

 birth to their young or have left their pup on the islands, and, guided 

 by that instinct given by nature to all mothers, have gone forth to 

 search for food to sustain the life of the little one. In either ease the 

 death of the mother means the death of the young. 



That thousands of the female seals were captured by the pelagic 

 hunters in Bering Sea during the season of 181)1, 

 W. H. Williams, j). 94. the most of which had to be secured quite a dis- 

 tance from the rookeries, owing to the presence of 

 armed vessels patrolling the sea for miles around the islands, and that 

 the slaughter of the seals was mostly of females, was confirmed by the 

 thousands of dead pups lying on the rookeries, starved to death by the 

 destruction of their mothers. 



We caught a few seals in there [Bering Sea]. When we first went 



in there we did not see many, but after we were 



John Woodruff, p. 506. in there a while we saw plenty of them that had 



large breasts that were full of milk, and our catch 



were most all females; the average would be about one male to ten 



females, and we killed cows in milk 150 miles from the seal islands. 



DEAD PUPS ON THE ROOKERIES. 

 Page 212 of The Case. 



Dead "pup" seals, which seemed to have starved to death, grew 



very numerous on the "rookeries" these latter 



E. N. Clark, p. 159. years; and I noticed when driving the "bachelor" 



seals for killing, as wo started them up from the 



beach, that many small "pups," half starved, apparently motherless, 



had wandered away from the breeding grounds and became mixed 



with the killable seals. The natives called my attention to these waifs, 



saying that it did not use to be so, and that the mothers were dead; 



otherwise they would be upon the breeding grounds. 



There were a good many dead pups on the rookeries every year I was 

 on the island, and they seemed to grow more nu- 

 Aiex. Hansson, p. 159. merous from year to year. There may not, in 

 fact, have been more of them, because the rook- 

 eries were all the time growing smaller, and the dead pups in the lat- 

 ter years were more numerous in proportion of the live ones. 



The seals Avere apparently subject to no diseases; the pups were al- 

 ways fat and healthy, and dead ones very rarely 



H. H. Hclniijn; p. 51. seen on or about the rookeries prior to 1881. Upon 

 my return to the islands, in 1886, 1 was told by my 



