RESULTS. 217 



year, hut also the rediietlon of tlie annual birth- RflVctg of pciag-^ 



'^ ic scaling. 



rate by 7,500 each following year foi* probal)ly 

 fifteen years, besides the added loss of the young- 

 l)orn to the female portion of the pups destroyed, 

 which would be an ever-increasing quantity. But 

 disregarding these last two important points, the 

 enormous destruction of seal life can be readily 

 seen if we take the figures supplied by the Cana- 

 dian Fisheries Report for 1890.^ In that year 

 there were sold in Victoria alone about 55,000 

 skins taken by pelagic sealers; allowing that 

 20,000 of these were secured by Indian hunters 

 and only 35,000 by white hunters, the number 

 of seals actually killed would be at least 125,000; 

 of these 80 per cent, or 100,000, would be females 

 and 75 per cent pregnant or mothers, allowing 

 one-half of these 75,000 pups thus destroyed by 

 the death of the females to be of that sex, the 

 total number of the producing sex killed would 

 be 137,500, and the total loss to the herd of 

 200,000 seals, for which the sealers show but 

 55,000 skins. It must be remembered that 

 55,000 represented only the number of skins 

 sold in Victoria, which is undoubtedly 10,000 

 short of the actual numl^er secured by both the 

 British and American sealing fleet. Each year 

 also adds to the destructiyeness of the fleet, for 



I rage 183. 

 271G 28 



