478 RESULTS. 



It is a well known fact that the female seals leave the islands and 

 go great distances for food, and it is clearly proven 

 that many of them do not return, as the number 



TV. S. Hereford, p. 33. of pupg s t arve d to death on the rookeries demon- 

 strates. 



I have been steward and cook at the company house for the lessees 



since 1882, and during the time when seals are 



Edward Hughes, p. 37. killed for skins or food I have daily prepared and 



cooked the meat in various ways for.the use of the 



table at which all white people board who live on or come to the island, 



and such a thing as a diseased seal lias never been known. I was 



present when Dr. Akerly, the resident physician, made an examination 



of some of them and it was found that their stomachs were empty, and 



that they exhibited all the conditions of starvation. 



None of our people ever knew of any sickness among the seals and 



pups, and their fiesh has always been our meat 

 Jac. Kotchooten, p. Vol. +•...,,] 



I have often cut open dead pups and examined their stomachs, and 

 found them empty, and the pups looked as if they 



NicoKKrukoff, p. 132. l !a ,l been starved to death. * * * 



When we used to kill pups for food and clothing in November, I 

 often examined them, and always found plenty of milk in their stomachs. 



1 never saw or heard tell of a sick seal, and although we have always 

 eaten the flesh of the fur-seal we have never found one that was diseased 

 in any way. 



I never saw a dead grown seal on the island during my twenty-five 

 years 1 residence here,. except odd ones that had 



Aggei Kushen, p. 128. been killed in fighting for places on the rookeries. 

 I never heard any of the old men who have 

 lived here for fifty years before my time speak of such a thing as sick- 

 ness or death among the seals. We eat the flesh of the seal and it 

 constitutes the meat supply of the natives, and seals from 2 to 5 

 years old have been killed by them for food every week during their 

 stay on the land ever since the islands were peopled, and no one has 

 yet found a diseased seal, either young or old. 



I saw many of them cut open and examined by the doctor (Dr. Ack- 

 erly) and their stomachs were empty. AH of the 

 Aggei Kushen, p. 130. dead pups were poor and thin and starved. I 

 believe they all died of starvation because their 

 mothers had been shot at sea when they went out to feed. I never 

 saw a full fat pup or one who had a mother to feed him dead, ex- 

 cept a few that were drowned in the surf. 



For if the mother seals are destroyed, their young can not but per- 

 ish; no other dam will suckle them; nor can they 

 H.H. Mdntyre,p. 51. subsist until at least three or four months old 

 without the mother's milk. The loss of this vast 

 number of pups, amounting to many thousands, we could attribute to 

 no other cause than the death of the mother at the hands of pelagic 

 seal-hunters. 



