408 ARTICLE BY DR. J. A. ALLEN. 



selected for killing, and also to redriv^e portions of the herd, in order 

 to secnre even the greatly restricted quota allowed to be taken in 181)0, 

 the last year of killing for commercial purposes. This decline in the 

 number of seals on the Pribilof rookeries is coincident with the increase 

 in the number of seals taken by pelagic sealing in the waters of Bering 

 Sea and of the North Pacific adjacent to the American coast. It is evi- 

 dent from the statistics of the Northwest catch, extending over a period 

 of twenty years, that pelagic sealing must have begun to aft'ect unfavor- 

 ably the Pribilof herd as early as 1880, although its effect was not clearly 

 recognized until a number of years later. These statistics show that 

 the pelagic catch of the ISTorthwest Coast from 1872 to 1884 aggregated 

 upward of 150,000 seals, and that from 1885 to 1891. inclusive, the North- 

 M'est catch numbered upward of 330,000. The annual pelagic catch 

 increased from about 20,000 in 1885 to upward of 60,000 in 1891. These 

 figures alone indicate an immense and steadily increasing drain upon 

 the Pribilof herd, from which almost solely this pelagic catch was 

 drawn. 



9. P>ut the decline of the Pribilof her d has been far greater than these 



statistics would in themselves seem to im^^ly. A care- 

 ofTda-i^eaS.*'*'''' ^^^^ aualysis of the character of the Northwest catch 



and the methods of pelagic sealing affords, however,a 

 complete and satisfactory explanation of the disaster that has over- 

 taken the Pribilof herd. In the first place, there is reasonable, and 

 apparently wholly conclusive, evidence that at least 80 per cent of the 

 480,000 Seals ca]itured by pelagic sealing during the years 1872 to 1891 

 (including both these years), were female seals, by far the greater part 

 of which were either heavy with young or had young dependent on 

 them for nourishment when killed. Secondly, the actual catch as re- 

 ported represents only a portion of the seals killed by the seal hunt- 

 ers, the average estimate of conservative aiul apparently impartial 

 reporters being that about GO per cent of the seals killed in pelagic 

 sealing are lost. 'From the voluminous evidence in hand it is apjiarent 

 that this estimate is much below the actual facts, startling as they seem. 

 There is first an admitted pelagic catch of over 480,000 seals during 

 the last twenty years; it is assumed that in taking this catch 288,000 

 additional seals were killed, making a total of 708,000. As at least 

 80 per cent of these may be assumed to have been females, either carry- 

 ing young or having young dependent upon them, we may add 012,400 as 

 the number of young seals (either unborn or nursing pups) destroyed 

 through the death of the breeding females, making an aggregate loss 

 to the Pribilof herd in twenty years of 1,430,000 seals. Of this total 

 two-thirds were killed during the seven years preceding 1892, to which 

 period the decline in the Pribilof herd is maiidy limited. Throwing 

 out of the account the number of seals killed and lost by pelagic hunt- 

 ing, the reported catch alone has involved the death of 500,000 seals 

 in seven years. Hence the assumption that the total annual loss dur- 

 ing this ])eriod consequent u))on peliigic sealing nuist aggregate 100,000 

 is (piite within the bounds of probability. This is an actual subtrac- 

 tion from the herd. If these breeding seals and pni)s had been allowed 

 to live and rejn'oduce, it is reasonable to sui)i>ose, making a liberal al- 

 lowance for the natnral death rate and for the continued killing of the 

 usual nninber of young male seals on the rookeries, that they would 

 have added at least 1,000,000 seals to the seal population of 1892. 



10. The only element in serious controversy upon which the above 



estimates in part depend is the proportion of seals 



wmmactrst-ais'iosi'.'' killed in pelagic sealing and lost. While some pelagic 



sealers claim (see alfidaxits in the British Blue Book, 



