62 



THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



irregular intervals, from the beginning to the closing of the entire season. The method of the " holluschickie " on these 

 hauling-grounds is not systematic — it is not distinct, like the manner and law prescribed and obeyed by the breeding- 

 seals, which till up those rookery-grounds 

 to the certain points as surveyed, and keep 

 these points intact for a week or ten days, 

 at a time, during the height of every season 

 in July and August; but, to the contrary, 

 upon the hauling-grounds to-day, an im- 

 mense drove of 100,000 will be seen before 

 you at English bay, sweeping hither and 

 surging thither over the polished surface 

 which they have worn with their restless 

 flippers, tracing and retracing their tire- 

 less marches; consequently the amount of 

 ground occupied by the "holluschickie" is 

 vastly in excess of what they would require 

 did they conform to the same law of distri- 

 bution observed by the breeding seals; and 

 this ground is-'therefore wholly untenable 

 for any such definite basis and satisfactory 

 conclusion as is that which I have surveyed 

 on the rookeries. Hence, in giving an esti- 

 mate of the aggregate number of "hollus- 

 chickie" or non-breeding seals, on the Priby- 

 lov islands, embracing as it does all the 

 males under six and seven years of age and 



GREAT EASTERN 

 Scale 



all the yearling females, it must, necessarily, be a simple opinion of mine founded upon nothing better than my 

 individual judgment. This is my conclusion: 



The non-breeding seals seem nearly equal in number to that of the adult breeding-seals; but without putting 

 them down at a figure quite so high, I may safely say that the sum total of 1,500,000, in round numbers, is a fair 

 enumeration, and quite within bounds of fact. This makes the grand sum total, of the fur-seal life on the Pribylov 

 islands, over 4,700,000. 



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?" My 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 five years and over one, may be safely taken 

 every year from the Pribylov 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 control of men; and to which, like any other great body of animal life, they 

 must ever be subjected to the danger of."* 



Loss of life sustained by the young seals. — From my calculations, given above, it will be seen that 

 1,000,000 pups, or young seals, in round numbers, are born upon these islands of the Pribylov group every year; 

 of this million, one-half are males. These 500,000 young males, before they leave the islands for sea, during October 

 and November, and when they are between five and six months old, fat and hardy, have suffered but a trilling loss 

 in numbers, say one per cent,, while on and about the islands of their birth, surrounding which, and upon which, 

 they have no enemies whatever to speak of; but, after they get well down to the Pacific, spread out over an 

 immense area of watery highways in quest of piscatorial food, they form the most helpless of their kind to resist 



between Tolsti Mees and Lukannon head, as the billows successively rolled in, and broke ; the seals swimming under the water, here on 

 St. George and beneath the Black Blufis, streaked their rapid course like comets in the sky ; and every time their dark heads popped above 

 the surface of the sea, they were marked by a blaze of scintillant light. 



*The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congregations of Pinnepedia was one that was constant'ia 

 my mind when on the ground and among them. I have found in the British AnnaU (Fleming's-), on page 17, an extract from the notes of 

 Dr. Trail: '-In 1833 I inquired for my old acquaintances, the seals of the Hole of Papa Westray, and was infonunl thai aboul four years 

 before they had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last few months begun to reappear. * * * About fifty years 

 ago multitudes of their carcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetlaud, and numbers were found 

 at sea in a sickly state." This note of Trail is the only record which I can find of a fatal epidemic among the seals ; it is not reasonable 

 to suppose that the Pribylov 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. 



