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'I'his very lar-e :IL-L:I< ualc is ;i(linitto'l t<> consist entirely of pups lor whose death 

 jiclagic sealing is not to Maine. On St. 1'iiul they were all counted before, mid on 

 St. George within two days of tin- death ot the pup alluded to, whose enforced period of 

 starvation i-oinnnMicc'd with the opening of the pelagic fishery. 



The existciiee of a large mortality of pups from natural causes has been the snhject 

 of much Conflict of opinion, l.lliot (O]>. Cit., p. 68) estimates the mortality in infancy, 

 or up to the age of fi\t or six month*, a- trifling, " >av I per cent., while on and about the 

 islands of tlu-ir hirth, SUIT ending which, and upon which they have no enemies whatever 

 to speak til.'' 



Mr. Ti'\vn<end. in 1895 (Op. Cit., p. :{7), could find no dead pups until after 

 the 1-t September; from that time: on, the death of the youni; was continuous, and for 

 1894 (()/>. Ci/., p. 15) Mr. Town-end makes the same statement in almost identical 

 words. 



Mr. True, in 1 cS<) "> (//;/(/., pp. 99, 100), saw a number of dead pups during his sojourn, 

 but did not think that the total would exceed 150 for all the St. Paul -rookeries. He 

 counted twenty-three dead pups on the 2nd August on Ketavie, and at the north end of 

 Tolstoi he oh-erved, on the 15th August, seventy in one small area, and about twenty-five 

 more a little further south. "The area referred to " [in the neighbourhood of which, 

 about the same day of the month, we found 1,895] "was occupied earlier in the season by 

 a ureat ma^ of seals, and I regard the number of dead pups found here as representing 

 the ordinary mortality of the young." 



.1 ud sic Crow ley (Sen. Doc. 137, Part 1, p. 16) speaks of the first dead pup of the 



n appearing on the rookery breeding-grounds " in the latter part of August 1894." 



Colonel Murray, in hi- Report for 1894 as Special Agent of the United States' Treasury, 



(ibid., p. 55) as follows: 



Another vi iv important feature observed in our inspection of the rookeries in 1894 

 \\a- the absence of dead pups in the early part of August, for up to our leaving on the 8th 

 I had no; si rn a drad pup on the island, and the agent in charge, who was on St. Paul 

 Island from June to the latter part of August, and who kept a close watch for dead pups, 

 tells me now that it was not till about the 20th August there was a dead pup to be seen, 

 but from that date to the close of the season, according to official communications received 

 from the islands, the carcasses of dead pups, starved and emaciated, increased with appalling 

 rapidity until 12,000 were encountered by the assistant agents." 



lint it is not necessaiv to multiply such instances or quotations. It is plain that 

 recent American observers have almost wholly overlooked the early mortality of pups from 

 natural causes, and have attributed the whole mortality of the season to pelagic sealinir. 



On the other hand, precisely the same phenomen that we witnessed was described in 

 detail by the British Commissioners (Report, p. HI ) trom their observations in 1891, and 

 ngain with still greater precision by Mr. .Macoun (Supplementary Report, p. 195) from his 

 -rvations in 1 89-. 



The Commissioners, "when visiting Tolstoi Rookery on the 29th July, observed, and 

 called attention to several hundred dead pups, which lay scattered about in a limited area, 

 on a smooth slope near the northern or inland end of the rookery-ground, a.nd at some 

 little distance from the shore." No dead pup.- caught their eye on St. George Island, and 

 comparatively tew on North-east Point, but at Polavina they found several hundred on the 

 4th August, and on the 19th August at Tolstoi, many more than had been there before. 

 In short, broadly speaking, they saw what we have seen ; they found the mortality slight 

 where we found it slight, and great where we found it great. 



Mr. Maroun, in 1*92, investigated the matter wish great care. On the 22nd July 

 he counted, close around his camera at Polavina, HH dead pups. On the ! 4th August he 

 found about 4,000 at Tolstoi "on the same ground on which those seen la.-t \eur (l s !Uj 

 were lying, but scattered over a larger area, and in much greater numbers." On North- 

 Point, on the 2()th August, he saw. with a ula-s, at least 500 in the view from Hutehinson's 

 Hill. All this took place in a year when no pelagic sealing was permitted in Behring 

 Sea. 



[313J fi 



