THE RUSSIAN FUR-SEAL ISLANDS. 135 



how each of these alleged causes applies to the couditions prevailing on the Russian 

 islands. 



It has been claimed that the driving of the male seals results in sapping their 

 vitality and impairing their procreative powers, thus causing a double decline by 

 shortening the life of the individual and causing a smaller number of pups to be born. 

 I have elsewhere in this report discussed this question. Here it will suffice to simply 

 inquire, How do the facts observed on the Commander Islands agree with this theory? 

 I have already summarized the facts, but they will bear a brief repetition. On Bering 

 Island the driving is so easy that even the black pups driven in flocks with the 

 adults are uninjured; yet there was quite a deficiency in bulls, virile and otherwise. 

 On Copper Island the drives are beyond comparison the hardest known anywhere; 

 yet there was a surplus of exceedingly virile bulls; and still, if we may be allowed a 

 comparison with the Pribylof Islands, we may add that the decrease in killables on 

 Copper Island is of a mucli later date than the corresponding decrease on the Priby- 

 lofs. 'Now, if the driving had had the slightest influence upon the numbers of the 

 seals, how did it happen that the seals were increasing while it is a fact that the drives 

 have never been easier, but if anything rather harsher'? Nothing seems more 

 clear and logical tlian this proposition, viz, that if the driving is the cause of the 

 decline, we should expect the falling ott' in bulls to have taken place on Copper Island, 

 and not on Bering Island; but the reverse is just the case. I am, therefore, com- 

 pelled to absolve the driving of tlie responsibility for the decrease on the Commander 

 Islands. 



The contention that the occasional raids practiced on the rookeries by mai'auding 

 schooners are materially to blame for the decrease has found but slight support, and 

 the experience on the Commander Islands does not substantiate it. I have shown 

 that the Commander Islands seals were increasing in spite of the numerous raids in the 

 early eighties; I have also shown how the little rock of Eobbcu Island has continued 

 to yield killable seals in spite of an unparalleled history of raids. It is safe to say that 

 the annual catch of the raiders of the latter island greatly exceeded that of the legiti- 

 mate killing on shore, and yet the falling off in the yield is not greater than that of 

 the other islands. 



There remains the pelagic senlinf/. Up to 1892 there was no startling decrease of 

 the female seals on the Commander Islands rookeries, while there had been for a couple 

 of years some difficulty in getting the former number of killables. In 1892 the sudden 

 invasion of the whole body of the pelagic sealing fleet upon the unprotected feeding- 

 grounds of the Copiter Island female seals took ])lace, followed by similar inroads in 

 1893 and 1891. The melancholy decimation of the female seals on the Cojjpcr Island 

 rookeries as witnessed by me in 189.5 can be directly traced to this preying upon the herd 

 off Copper Island. The extension of the hunt to the Bering Island feeding-grounds 

 in 1895 explains easily the presence in great numbers of pups starved to death on the 

 Bering Island Rookery. The somewhat earlier falling oft' in killables is attributable 

 to the increase in the winter and spring catch off Japan. 



The simultaneous or sequential occurrence of the above facts and phenomena is 

 evidently more than a mere coincidence. As cause and result, they fit like a hand in 

 a glove, and / hare been unable to resist the force of the logic which places the blame for 

 the decrease of the Commander Islands seals upon pelagiu sealing, and upon pelagic 

 sealing alone. 



