KEPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 29 



is universally recognized as permissible if only to preserve 

 the normal proportion of tlie sexes. This is the case in 

 all instances of game preservation and stock raising, and 

 in the particular example of the fur-seal, it is numerically 

 demonstrable that, in maintaining- a constant total of seals, 

 a certain proportion of females should be annually avail- 

 able for killing. The kdliug of gravid fenmles must, how- 

 ever, be deprecated as specifically injurious, and in any 

 measures proposed for the regulation of seal hunting 

 should receive special attention. 



81. Respecting the number of seals lost after being killed PfrcentaKeiost 



, ,'- ^ i'-i i-u ixii.of seals killed. 



at sea, a large mass ot evidence has been accumulated, not 

 alone directly from the pelagic sealers proper, but also 

 from inde|)endent native hunters, both Indian and Aleut, 

 and from other sources of a disinterested character. The 

 result of this goes to show that the asserted wastefulness 



of the methods employed is gravely exaggerated by 

 14 common report, and that there has been uuirked 



improvement in this respect due to the increasing- 

 experience of the hunters (§ 613 et scq.). 



82. Against this expert testimony we find scarcely more 

 than supposititious statements quoted and requoted, which, 

 when traced back to their sources, are discovered to rest 

 either on very limited experience or on very doubtful au- 

 thority; in some of which the number of seals fired at is 

 hopelessly confused with the number killed, while in others 

 it is even assumed that the number of rounds of ammuni- 

 tion disposed of represents the number of seals killed. We 

 have tlumght it well to follow up all the statements upon 

 which these allegations and hypothetical calculations are 

 based, and practically all of these are summarised else- 

 where (§ 014), and call for no further comment here. It is 

 certain that inexperienced hunters miss many seals, and 

 lose a considerable proportion of those hit, but such purely 

 negative results cannot rightly be assumed to have any 

 bearing-on the number lost by skilled hunters, such as con- 

 stitute the crews of the successful sealers. 



83. More recently a further accusation has been made Mortaiiiy of 

 against the practice of pelagic sealing, to the eftect that-^"""^''*"'' '*■ 

 large numbers of females, with young upon the breeding- 

 islands, are killed at sea, and that in consequence many of 



the young die. The consideration of this point involves so 

 many facts of seal life that it cannot be treated at length 

 here; but it may be mentioned that, when upon the Priby- 

 loft' Islands in 1891, we ourselves were the first to note and 

 to draw attention to the occurrence of a considerable num- 

 ber of dead " pups " in certain parts of the rookery grounds. 

 Various explanations of this fact were offered by the resi- 

 dents of the islands, both Whites and Aleuts, but in no 

 instance was the killing- of the mothers at sea at first 

 voluntarily advanced by them as a principal cause. The 

 actual circumstances, closely investigated by us, were, ' 



indeed, such as to call for some other explanation, as else- 

 where detailed (§ 344 et seq.). It is, nevertheless, certain 

 that mothers are sometimes killed at sea, especially in 

 l)roximity to the shore fronts, and it is chiefly ui^ou this 



