22 REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 



of tlie nineteen sncceedins years of tlie lease averages 

 103,147. The ol'iicial tigures for the entire twenty years of 

 the lease farther sliow tliat, during tliis term, lL'9,r)30 seals, 

 including about 93,()()() unweaned young, or ''])ups," were 

 killed for food or otherwise, of M'liich the skins were not 

 marketable; this waste alone being more than 7 per cent, 

 of the whole number killed. 



50. These totals, however, do not include seals lost or 

 destroyed in various ways incidental to the modes i)rac- 

 tised in driving and killing (§ 704 ct scq.), nor those taken 

 or killed in raids (§ 727 ct ficq.), or other illegal ways con- 

 sequent on the imi)erlV'ct ]>rotection of the islands. These 

 together would raise tlie iij^ures representing the annual 

 killing by a very material though unknowu amount. Lieu- 

 tenant Maynard, in his report Mritten in 1874, estimates 

 the total number of seals killed each year about that date 

 at 112,000. According to Bryant ('^M<mograpli of North 

 American Pinnepeds," p. 410), the total number of seals 

 actually killed upon the islands during the first six years 

 of the ITnited States control amounted to 110,000 annually. 



51. The killing since 1807 of so large a number of seals 

 on the Pribyloff Islands thus constituted a draft on their 

 seal life of a character never before attempted, and more 

 than twice as- great as any similar demand of which com- 

 parable records have been preserved; the aniuial average, 

 as above stated, for the previous eighty years, having been 

 about 34,000. 



52. The various reports on the condition of the seals 

 resorting to the Pribyloff Islands in ditferenfc years, ami 

 other published information bearing;- on the same subject, 

 are often contradictory, and sometimes so manifestly inac- 

 curate, particularly iu respect to the crucial jioint of the 



Reports aflord mimber of seals, that it is difiicult from these alone to form 

 imsa IS ii.K.iy .^^^y satisfactory or coherent idea of the actual state of seal 

 life during much of this period. These discrei>ancies iu 

 part arise from the frequent changes which occurred iu the 

 l)ersonnel of the Government Agents and Comjjany's offi- 

 cers, in consequence of which no single method of ascer- 

 taining the condition of the "rookeiies," or of estimating 

 the number of seals fretiuenting the islands, was long nmin- 

 tained : in i)art from tlie api)earance iu several cases of the 

 same individual, now in the capa(;ity of an emi)loye 

 1.0 of the Company, and again as a supervising offlcer 

 of the (rovernmeut. I'here are alst), unfortunately, 

 certain groups of years during whicli no serious attempt 

 appears to have been made to ri'cord tlie true condition of 

 the breeding islands. This is particularly the case in years 

 between 1880 and 1880. 

 Eviaoiice of 53. The killing on the islands was, however, by law con- 

 otii.rkiiHis. lined to male seals, and it is, rather from the collateral 

 evidence afforded by allusions to the proi)orfion of virile 

 males to females, together with other incidental references, 

 the meaning of which becomes clear when coupled with 

 local knowledge, tlian from many of the direct statements 

 l»ublished, that a true idea of the actual coiulition of seal 

 life on the islands durini>- these years can be formed. 



