390 CALLORHINUS URSINUS NORTHERN FUR SEAL. 



in their habits, it was not so easy to calculate their numbers ;-. 

 but after comparing these groups with the masses of breeding 

 Seals in their vicinity, and estimating their proportional num- 

 bers, I found that they were nearly as numerous as the breed- 

 ing Seals, numbering at least one million. Adding to these the 

 young of the year, nearly equal in number to the females, it 

 became evident that there were on the island at that time not 

 less than 3,230,000 Seals. 



" Under the Russian regime the work was all done by the hand 

 labor of the natives, the Seals being not only driven in, killed, 

 and skinned by them, but the skins were carried on their backs 

 to the salt-houses. The work of salting and preparing for ship- 

 ment was necessarily slow, tedious, and exhausting, and as 

 skins of young animals were smaller to take off and lighter to 

 carry, and the choice of animals being left to the natives, they 

 seldom killed any over three years of age, and only a small por- 

 tion of this. age. As a natural consequence, the killing falling 

 on this younger and more numerous class, a larger number of 

 males than were really necessary for breeding purposes escaped 

 to grow up, so that at. this date more than 30 per cent, of the 

 male non-breeding Seals were of procreative age. Owing to 

 the large number of young males constantly in the water about 

 , the rookeries, in addition to the beachrn asters, all the females 

 iwere impregnated before the 10th of August. 



" The number of full-grown males at this date may be consid- 

 ered as three times greater than the number required, or equal 

 to one full-grown male to every three or four females. In con- 

 sequence of this large excess of males, and their strong desire 

 to possess the females, they crowded the rookeries to the extent 

 of leaving only fighting room, and kept up a continuous strug- 

 gle for the mastery, regardless of both mother and young, and 

 often destroying each other. There being always a large re- 

 serve on the alert, the contending forces were recruited as fast 

 as the combatants became crippled or exhausted, so that there 

 ^was no cessation in the strife, day nor night, while the noise of 

 ;the mingled voices could be heard at the distance of five miles 

 from the rookeries. 



; " The Eussians contracted with dealers in Europe for a given 

 number of skins at a fixed rate per skin, and then ordered them 

 taken at the islands. The killing being left to the parties there, 

 they, for their own convenience (as before stated), killed mostly 

 from the younger class. The killing commenced on the 1st of 



