REPORT OP BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 171 



under the suppositiou that the lessees of these islands conld have no 

 competitors in the North Pacific. It was assumed that equal or proxi- 

 mately equal numbers of males and females were born, tliat these were 

 subject to equal losses by death or accident, and that, in consequence 

 of the polygamous habits of the fur-seals, a large number of males of 

 any given merchantable age might be slaughtered each year without 

 seriously, or at all, interfering with the advantageous proportion of 

 males remaining for breeding purposes. 



()()!. The existence of the breeding rookeries as distinct from the 

 hauling-grounds of the young males, or holluschickie, was supposed to 

 admit,"and did in former years to a great extent admit, of these young 

 males being killed without disturbing the breeding animals. The young 

 seals thus "hauling" apart from the actual breeding grounds were sur- 

 rounded by natives and driven off to sonie convenient place, 

 115 where males of suitable size were clubbed to death, and from 

 which the rejected animals were allowed to return to the sea. 

 The carcasses were skinned on the killing ground, the skins salted, and 

 at a later date bundled in pairs and shipped, with such duplication or 

 checking of count as might be supposed to afford guarantees to the 

 agents of the Government and to the lessees that the interests of both 

 were fairly treated. 



6i)2. There can be no doubt that if the number permitted to be killed 

 had been fixed at an amount so low as to allow for exceptional and 

 unavoidable natural causes of interference with seal life, and if it had 

 been rearranged each year in conformity with the ascertained condi- 

 tions, killing might have been continued without general damage to the 

 seal life of the Pribyloft" Islands, and very probably even with a con- 

 tinued gradual increase in numbers of seals resorting to the islands up 

 to some unknown maximum point. Such results might have followed, 

 notwithstanding the practical imperfection which clearly attached in 

 execution to these theoretically appropriate methods, and in spite of 

 the important change from natural conditions which any disturbance 

 in proportion of sexes involved, if the demands made in the matter of 

 annual take had been moderate; but when the number fixed for killing- 

 resulted, as has been shown, in an average slaughter of over 103,000 

 seals, it bore so large a proportion to the entire number of animals 

 resorting to the islands as to lead necessarily in the long run to serious 

 diminution. This decrease continued, on the whole, in an increasing 

 ratio, being due not only to the actual number of seals slaughtered, but 

 also to the numbers lost in various ways incidental to the methods of 

 control and modus operandi on the islands, which loss, though formerly 

 a matter of minor importance (because counted against a large annual 

 surplus), in the face of the greatly decreased numbers, became a very 

 serious addition to the total of diminution. In short, from a transcen- 

 dental point of view, the methods proposed were api)ropriate and even 

 perfect, but in practical execution, and as judged by the results of a 

 series of years, they proved to be faulty and injurious. 



663. Summing up the records as to the number of seals killed on the 

 Pribyloff' Islands, Professor J. A. Allen writes as follows : 



111 this year (1822'), it was onlered that yoiiug seals should be spared, each year for 

 the purpose of keeping up the stock. This order -was so honestly enforced, that in 

 four years the number of seals on St. Paul's Island increased tenfold. The number 

 annually taken these years was only 8,000 or 10,000,, instead of 40,000 to 50,000, the 

 number" formerly killed yearly. Subsequently, the killing was allowed to greatly 

 increase, which prevented any augiiicntaticm in the number of seals. In 1834, the 

 number allowed to be killed on St. I'aul's Island was reduced from 12,000 to 6,000. 

 After this date the conditions of increase were more carefully studied aud more care- 



