476 RESULTS. 



broken up. I speak positively about it, because no other cause can be 

 assigned for their depletion upon any reasonable hypothesis. 



It was easy enough to see what they died of. They simply starved 



to death, wandering about and bleating until it 



Jno. Armstrong, p. 2. . made one's heart ache to see them. Their mothers 



had been killed off in the water, and the pups 



lived and suffered for weeks. They are very tenacious of life, holding 



out six or eight weeks or more after they lose their mothers. 



These dead pups have increased from year to year since 1887, and in 



1891 the rookeries were covered with dead pups. 



K. Ariomanoff, p. 100. In my sixty-seven years' residence on the island I 



never before saw anything like it. None of our 



people have ever known of any sickness among the pups or seals and 



have never seen any dead pups on the rookeries except a few killed by 



the old bulls when fighting or by drowning when the surf washed 



them off*. 



Dr. Ackerly, the lessees' physician at the time, made an autopsy of 

 some of the carcasses, and reported that he could 

 Milton Barnes, p. 101. find no traces of any diseased condition whatever, 

 but there was an entire absence of food or any 

 signs of nourishment in the stomach. Before Dr. Dawson left I called 

 his attention to what Dr. Ackerly had done, but whether he saw him 

 on the subject I can not tell. 



I procured a number of these pups, and Dr. Akerly. at my request. 



made autopsies, not only at the village, but later 

 J.Stanley Brown, p. 19. on upon the rookeries themselves. The lungs of 



these dead pups floated in water. There was no 

 organic disease of heart, liver, lungs, stomach, or alimentary canal. In 

 the latter there was but little and often no fecal matter and the stom- 

 ach was entirely empty. Pups in the last stage of emaciation were 

 seen by me upon the rookeries, and their condition, as well as that of 

 the dead ones, left no room to doubt that their death was caused by 

 starvation. 



Some men tell me last year " Karp, sealsare sick." I know seals are not 



sick; I never seen a sick seal, and I eat seal meat 



Karp Buterin, p. 103. every day of my life; all our people eat seal meat, 



white men eat seal meat, no one ever seen bad seal 



meat or sick seal. No big seals die unless we club them, only pups die 



when starved, after the cows are shot at sea. When we used to kill 



pups for food in November they were always full of milk; the pups 



that die on the rookeries have no milk. The cows go into the sea to 



feed after the imps are born, and the schooner men shoot them all the 



time. 



The pups on the rookeries were fat and healthy, and while I was on 

 the islands no epidemic disease ever appeared 



Chae.Bryaiit,p.8. among them, nor did the natives have stories of 

 an epidemic ever destroying them. 



