56 REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 



tlie California coast, tliey are by no means numerous there now, having 

 been nearly exterminated by unrestricted slaughter by the sealers."* 

 This local depletion of seals may incidentally be taken as a further evi- 

 dence of the local character of the seal lierds above referred to, a point 

 of some importance, which is subsequently discussed. If included in 

 the annual migration-cycle of the Pribylofit' Island seals, the Californian 

 coast should not at this date have shown any notable sign of diminu- 

 tion in number of ser.ls. 



It is, however, extremely im^^robable that these seals were concerned 

 in the annual migration to Behring Sea, and doubtful whether they 

 ■were regularly migratory at all in the proper sense of the term. Like 

 most of the fur-seals of the southern hemisphere, they may merely have 

 resorted to the neighbouring land at the breeding season. 



Scammon states that the fur seals formerly bred along the Californian 

 coast. The Farallone Islands, off that coast, are known to have been 

 the resort of a considerable body of seals, which may be assumed to 

 have been of the same species with those of the North Pacific, and 

 doubtless occupied these islands as breeding places. The Russians 

 established a station there, and, ''from 1812 to 1818, about 8,400 fur- 

 seal skins were obtained there, and it is stated that before their occu- 

 pation by the Russians as many as 10,000 were taken on these islands 

 in a single autumn. "t The season at which this killing took place, if 

 correctly given, is alone sufficient to show that the seals found here 

 were not migrants from the far north. 



192. Disregarding exceptional cases of small importance, with the 

 occurrence of stragglers x)receding or lagging behind the main body of 

 seals, and including both sexes and all ages of seals without reference 

 to the different dates at which these are known to reach various points, 

 it would thus appear that the seals which resort to the eastern i^art of 

 Behring Sea, with the Pribylotf Islands as a centre, in the main 

 31 frequent that sea from the early i)art of June till about the 

 middle of November, a i>eriod of about five months and a-half. 

 Behring Sea may, in fact, be named their summer habitat. 



Daring a period of four and a-half or five months, extending in the 

 main from about the 1st January to the middle or end of May, they 

 frequent the sea lying off that part of the West Coast included between 

 the 56th and 4Gth parallels of north latitude, — these limits including 

 the whole length of the British Columbian coast, and extending beyond 

 it slightly at both extremes. This is the winter habitat of the fur-seal 

 of the eastern side of the North Pacific. 



During a great part of the time, in which the seals are off this coast, 

 the weather is so tempestuous as to prevent successful x)elagic hunting, 

 whether from schooners, or directly by canoes using the shore as a base 

 of operations. The actual numbers of seals seen close in shore depend 

 largely upon the weather in each locality, and varies much from year to 

 year; and with a prevalence of strong westerly winds, the grey pups 

 or yearlings are driven into the immediate vicinity of the coast and into 

 its bays and channels, first and in the largest numbers. The neigh- 

 bourhood of Dixon Entrance, the northern end of Vancouver Island, 

 the entrance to Queen Charlotte Sound, and the entrance to the Straits 

 of Fuca, are localities specially notable for the abundance of seals 

 during the winter and spring. 



The actual resorts of the seals are not alone influenced by the weather, 

 but also greatly by the supply of suitable food, as more fully explained 



* " Mouogiapli of North American Pinuipeds," p. 332. 

 i Bancroft's Works, vol. xxxiii, p. 487. 



