REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. ^ 109 



slopes of the low hill upon which the flagstaff stands at St. Paul village. 

 Making- due allowance, liowever, for these and other accidental circum- 

 stances, the fact remains that, surrounding all, or nearly all, the present 

 rookery grounds, there is a margin of varying width, and not always 

 concentric with the still bare area, pretty clearly marked out by such 

 difference of sod. 



387. Kespecting the time which it might take for any portion of seal- 

 worn ground to revert to its original tussocky condition if undisturbed, 

 little can be said with certainty, further than that it must be many 

 years. The tussocky character of the general surface upon the islands 

 has arisen in the course of time and by the persistence of grass-clumps, 

 about which sand and soil carried by the wind have collected, and 

 vegetable matter produced by continued growth has accumulated. 

 Experience on the western plains of North America, where a buffalo- 

 path or cart-trail is sometimes found to have retained its identity, with 

 little a])parent change for thirty or more years, Mould indicate that the 

 time of reversion here to the original state of the surface cannot be 

 placed at less than perhaps fifty years, while a century would, in all 

 probability, more nearly represent it. 



388. Without, however, attaching any importance to particular limits 

 of time, it is perfectly clear that both in the extent of the seal-polished 

 rocks and in that of the distinctive vegetation, we see marked the 

 greatest expansion which the areas so characterized have at any time 

 attained during the last 100 years or so, and that these traces thus carry 

 us back so far as to render them of little value in the elucidation of the 

 changes of late years. Still further, it is obvious that such limits need 

 not, and i)robably do not, quantitatively represent the actual expansion 

 of the seal herd centering about any given rookery ground, but, on the 

 contrary, indicate an outer boundary, within the limits of which the 

 seals have oscillated during a long term of years. The extraordinary 

 fixity which has been attributed to the rookery areas and hauling 

 grounds, arising naturally from a popular exaggeration of their sub- 

 permanent character, has alone rendered it mentally possible to advance 

 to the further stage of belief, which has induced some writers to 

 assume that the whole of the areas showing traces of seal occui)ation 

 have been at some definite time simultaneously and closely occupied. 

 There is no basis for any such belief in nature, or in the observed 

 habits of the seals, and any reference to it with this meaning involved, 

 merely tends to cloud the consideration of the true facts of the case. 



389. Dr. Mclntyre, in a passage already quoted, refers clearly to this 

 point, and the facts previously given in connection with changes in the 

 rookeries further illustrate it, though it is not at once grasped in 

 an inspection of the seal islands for the first time, or in one confined to 

 a single period of the year. It is, moreover, very easily understood that 

 any one with but a general remembrance of the former greater abun- 

 dance of seals on the islands, if asked to indicate the limits 



70 occupied by them and groping for some tangible means of doing 

 so, should seize upon the "grass limit" as affording this means, 

 and maintain that that limit is co-extensive with the spread of the seals 

 in the " sixties" or in the " seventies," as the case may be. 



390. The best locality actually found for observing the circumstances 

 connected with old seal-frequented areas was that of the important 

 rookeries of North-East Point. The "grass limit" was there particu- 

 larly well marked, es|)ecia]ly in the month of September, and it was 

 noted that the rocks with i»olished edges scarcely, and then only in a very 

 slightly marked form, extended as far as the " grass limit," giving reason 



