REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 23 



54. The proper proportion in number of virile males to ^^^-pmw.^of 

 adult females is a matter of importance, and in estimates, 

 made while the rookeries of the Pribyloff Islands were still 

 in excellent condition, there is a satisfactory measure ot 

 agreement on this point. Bryant placed tins proportion at 

 one male to nine to twelve females, while Elliott states tlie 

 mean number of females in a harem in 1872-74 at from five 

 to twenty ("Monograph of North Ameiican Pinnepeds,"p. 

 390: United states Census IJeport, p. 3(5). IVI. Grebnitzky, 

 Superintendent of the Commander Islands, and a naturalist 

 of pre-eminent experience in the facts of seal life, infonned 

 us that when the proportion of females exceeded ten to each 

 mature male, he considered that too many males were being- 

 killed and that each harem should in no case contain more 

 tlum twenty females. When, therefore, we find the harems 

 in the Pribyloff Islands growing yearly larger, till at the 

 present time they surpass the proportions above mentioned 

 from four to eight times, it is reasonable to conclude that 

 in this change the ettect of an excessive slaughter ot young 

 males is rendered ap])arent. 



55 Our own and all other local observations on the rook- 

 eries during the last few years prove that it is no uncommon 

 event to find a single male S(>al with a harem numbering 

 from forty to fifty, and even as many as sixty to eighty, 



females 



50. Further evidence with the same meaning is afforded J-ther^^^^^^^^ 

 by the increasing number of barren females; by the dis- 

 turbance and change iji the habits of the seals ; by the actual 

 dearth of "killable" seals in the vicinity of the nearer rook- 

 eries, and the extension of driving (as early as 1879 or 1880) 

 to places which had i)reviously been held in reserve and 

 which had seldom or never been drawn upon in earlier years ; 

 by the driving of "killables" from the very margins ot the 

 breeding rookeries, which should have remained undis- 

 turbed : by the longer time during which the killing required 

 to be continued in later years in order to enable the iull 

 quota to be obtained, and by the larger number ot under- 

 sized and otherwise ineligible animals, including temales, 

 ruthlessly driven up in recent years and turned away trom 

 the killinV grounds in an exhausted and bewildered it not 

 actually injured state. The pro]>ortiou thus turned away, 

 according to the report of the Special Treasury Agent m 

 1890, actually rose to 90 per cent, of the whole number 



driven 



57. A critical investigation of the published iii after, ^J;;dicato^j-o^^^ 



together with the evidence personally obtained trom many 

 sources and an examination of the local details ot the rook- 

 eries and hauling grounds on the Pribyloff Islands, leads 

 us to believe that tliere has been a nearly continuous tleteri- 

 oration in the condition of the rookeries and decrease in the 

 number of seals frequenting the islands from the time at 

 which these i)assed under the control of the United States, 

 and that although this decrease may possibly have been 

 interrupted, or even reversed, in some si)ecially favourable 

 years, it was nevertheless real, and in the mam persistent. 



