REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 



89 



void of food, and tbat all seals resorting to the islands seem, in a great 

 deoiee to sbare in a common abstinence. While, tlieretore, it may be 

 considered certain that after a certain period, the females begin to seek 

 such food as can be obtained, the absence of excrementitions matter on 

 the rookery grounds, elsewhere referred to, shows that this cannot occur 

 till towards the close of the breeding season. It may, further, be stated, 

 that there is a very general belief among the natives, both on thePriby- 

 loff and Commander Islands, to the effect that the females do not leave 

 the land to feed while engaged in suckling their young, and that neither 

 of the two females killed in our presence for natural history purposes 

 on Behring Island, on the 5th September, had any trace of food m the 

 stomach, though killed within a few yards of the rookery from which 

 they had iust been driven. Also bearing on the same point is the state- 

 ment made in a memorandum received from Her Majesty's Minister at 

 T6ki6 based on information obtained from a gentleman lully conver- 

 sant with the habits and haunts of the fur-seal of the western side of 

 the North Pacific, as follows: "It is sometimes stated that the 

 55 breeding cows are in the habit of leaving the rookeries to fish for 

 the support of their young, but the experienced authority on 

 whose remarks these notes are founded is not of this opinion. He has 

 never found food inside the female fur-seal taken on the breeding 

 grounds." (See further under Food paragraph 224, et seq.) 



308. It appears to us to be quite probable, however, that toward the 

 close of the season of suckling, the female seals may actually begin to 

 spend a considerable portion of their time at sea in search of food. It 

 is unlikely that this occurs to any notable extent till after the middle of 

 September, before which the season of pelagic sealing in Behring Sea 

 practically closes. It is not as if the mere presence of seals in any 

 particular part of Behring Sea during the period iu question could be 

 taken as representing that of females from the breeding rookeries, for, 

 as already stated, other classes of seals remain thus at large during the 

 greater part, or even the whole, of the breeding season, and it is gener- 

 ally very dilhcult even for the most experienced eye under favourable 

 circumstances to distinguish at sea between such unattached seals and 

 breeding females. Several of the statements as to the feeding resorts 

 of breeding females from the islands have undoubtedly been founded 

 on the mere presence of seals of some kind at sea. In fact, most of the 

 previously published statements on this point have been based either 

 exclusively on information gained on the breeding islands, and, there- 

 fore, not to the point, or on such information, loosely combined with 

 notes on the position of seals casually observed at sea. It is unfortu- 

 nate that the prohibition of pelagic sealing in Behring Sea in 1891- 

 rendered it impossible in this i)articular year to gather much actual 

 experience in this matter, such as might have been obtained by exam- 

 ining the condition and sex of seals killed at various known distances 

 from the islands. . , , ,. 



The statements collected from other sources are often singularly diver- 

 gent; but, notwithstanding the evident lack of information on this par- 

 ticular point, a remarkable agreement is found among those interested 

 in decrying pelagic sealing, to the effect that the pelagic sealers do, and 

 must, kill a large number of female breeding seals. In order, however, 

 to show the present state of this question, and the actual basis of many 

 and serious complaints against sea sealing, a few quotations from various 

 authorities on seal life may first be given, and after that some notes on 

 the further evidence obtained by ourselves. 



