FUR SEALS AND OTHER LIFE, PRIBILOF ISLANDS, 1914. 99 



arise. The number of males which should be killed or reserved can not, in the nature of 

 the case, be absolute. It is not and never can be a fixed number, and the only possible 

 way in which it can be stated in advance is in relative terms. That is, the number to be 

 killed or to be reserved in any given season depends upon the number that are present 

 in that season and upon the relation which the number of males of certain ages bears to 

 the number of females. With pelagic sealing abolished, these numbers and proportions 

 can be determined with all reasonable accuracy. Whether the herd be large or small, 

 diminishing or progressing, good management demands discretionary power in the 

 hands of responsible officers in order that action may be governed by circumstances. 

 Inflexible rules applied to living animals are dangerous under any circumstances and in 

 the case of the seals are no more necessary now than they will ever be. The relative 

 proportions of males and females should be the same in a herd of a thousand seals as in 

 one of a hundred thousand or a million, and in any case it is wholly a matter of propor- 

 tions, not of fixed numbers. 



RESERVES UNDULY LARGE. 



The subject of reserving males for breeding has received careful consideration in 

 the present report. It has been recognized that the number of bulls in recent years may 

 have been inadequate, and it has been concluded that in the future a much larger supply 

 would be desirable, even to the point of having somewhat more than the requirements 

 of a most conservative ratio of males to females. But the reserves of the law go far 

 beyond the needs determined by a careful investigation of present conditions. 



Aside from the close-time provision of existing law, which in itself provides more 

 males than necessary, the subsequent reserves of 5,000 per annum are excessive. After 

 thorough and unprejudiced investigation it is found impossible by argument or calcu- 

 lation to justify such large reserves. As shown elsewhere (p. 82), the close-time and the 

 later reserves will produce an enormous supply of males unwarranted by any policy, 

 unless it be one of permanent cessation of killing for sentimental reasons. Such a policy 

 is, of course, impractical, for it would mean a return to pelagic sealing, which is brutal in 

 the extreme, whereas land killing is quite as humane as the killing of domestic animals 

 for food. This great excess of males would doubtless cause some increased fighting and 

 consequent mortality detrimental to the herd, but laying this aside as of minor impor- 

 tance, it is evident that a great waste is involved. The money loss alone during the 

 period affected promises to be very large, not less than $2,700,000 by most conservative 

 estimates. 



It should be stated that if these reserves were liberal merely to provide for emer- 

 gencies or errors in estimates, no objection to them could be urged. But they are much 

 more than liberal, since they provide not twice as many but several times as many as a 

 very conservative ratio of males to females would require. In the end it is believed they 

 would produce a stock of some 50,000 bulls where less than 10,000 would be a liberal 

 allowance. That is, if bulls and cows increase at the same rate, the law provides for a 

 herd in 1921 in which there would be one bull for every three cows, instead of one to forty, 

 the a reasonable ratio. 



