EFFECTS OF CONTACT WITH MAN. 135 



As a result of all this the habits of the fur seal are tixed aiid ini mutable. No 

 better illustration of this can be cited than the fact that after having been driven 

 from their hauling ground, culled over, and subjected to the excitement of the killing 

 grounds, bachelors have been known to return quietly and take up their places on 

 these same hauling grounds as if nothing had happened. During the past two 

 seasons seals have been repeatedly watched as they were released from the killing 

 ground at the village, swim away directly through Zoltoi Bay, round Keef Point, and 

 haul out on the hauling ground of Eeef rookery from which they had been driven 

 perhaps three hours before. And this thing goes on throughout the season and has 

 been going on for half a century. The seals have no remembrance of past events. 

 Once in the water they are solely governed by the instinct which leads them to haul 

 out at the particular point where they are accustomed to rest. That they have been 

 so recently disturbed there is merely an incident of which they remember nothing. 



CONTACT WITH MAN HAS HAD NO EFFECT. 



The fur seals on the Pribilof Islands have been constantly in contact with men 

 during more than a century. At times, in its early history, the herd has come near 

 annihilation as a result of man's rapacity and improvidence. But neither this nor the 

 more systematic and reasonable treatment which has been accorded them in recent 

 years has affected in the least the habits of the animals. So far as we know, the fur 

 seals of a century and a half ago did exactly what their descendants of to-day are 

 doing. There is nothing in present conditions nor in the conditions of the past to 

 warrant the assumption that in the future they will cease to do the same thing. 



At the approach of winter they depart on their migrations. With the returning 

 spring they unfailingly arrive class by class and go through the routine of their daily 

 life. There is no evidence that any phase of their life activity has changed since man 

 found them. None have been found to seek other shores. It is probably not possible 

 for man to drive them from their breeding haunts. Their rookeries are their home, 

 and to them they will return so long as they live. 



ALTERATION OF CONDITIONS. 



Some slight alteration in the conditions of life among the fur seals have neces- 

 sarily resulted from the interference of man. Land killing has lessened the number 

 of bulls, reducing their turbulence, In the natural state of the animals, when the 

 adult males were practically equal in number to the females the fighting among 

 them must have been something terrific. To-day, when the adult bulls are only about 

 one thirtieth of the number of females, the amount of fighting indulged in is sufficient 

 to show that the male fur seal has lost none of his belligerent qualities. 



THE BACHELORS OF BERING ISLAND. 



From the excessively close killing of the males on the Russian islands, a curious 

 result has been brought about. On Xorth rookery of Bering Island, for a number of 

 years, every male that could be found had been killed. As a result, there were in 

 1895 not more than 6 adult bulls to a herd of about 1,000 breeding females. On this 

 rookery the bachelors were found to occupy places among the breeding seals instead 

 of hauling by themselves, as under normal conditions. In this, however, we are not 

 to assume a change of habit. It is the instinct of the male to seek the breeding 



