SKAL LIFE ON THE I'KIHILOF ISLANDS. 55 



During our live days 1 stay on St. Paul Island we inspected all the 

 rookeries, walking over many of them, and 1 carefully noted their con- 

 dition, the sparsely settled breeding grounds, the deserted hauling 

 grounds, and the desolate appearance of the place in comparison with 

 what 1 saw there only live years ago. when hundreds of thousands of 

 seals swarmed over the greater portion of the ground that is now bare 

 and abandoned. 



Next to the shriveled condition of the seal herd as a whole, the most 

 noted change 1 observed on the breeding grounds since 1881) was the 

 great number of idle bulls, young and vigorous, lying around in all 

 directions, watching an opportunity to secure cows. 



They can not succeed, however, for during the past ten years the 

 cows have been the quarry of the pelagic sealer, whose improved meth- 

 ods of hunting in the open waters, and whose unceasing, unerring, and 

 merciless hunting of them at all seasons, have at length succeeded in 

 destroying at least a million nursing mothers, who, with their starved 

 offspring and unborn young, represent a loss of many millions, which 

 in turn accounts for the acres of bare and unoccupied rookery ground 

 over which we walked without rinding a seal. When in 1891 I inspected 

 the same rookeries 1 counted 1,250 idle bulls at t ; ie very height of the 

 rutting season, and I have since observed a steady increase of breeding 

 bulls as the herd continued as steadily to decrease as a whole. 



So plain and palpable has this increase of bulls been for the past live 

 years, it has become a topic of general conversation among those who 

 have had opportunities to observe the rookeries from year to year dur- 

 ing the breeding season: and in his annual report for 1S94 the agent 

 in charge of the islands says: 



The only class of seals that showed an increase over last year were the young bulls, 

 who were unable to find a single cow with which to start a ha rein on the rookeries. 

 There were more idle bulls of breeding age than there were bulls with harems oil 

 the breeding grounds. (See Report of Joseph 1>. Crow ley. 1^9L) 



Another very important feature observed in our inspection of the 

 rookeries in 1894 was the absence of dead pups in the early part of 

 August, for up to our leaving on the 8th 1 had not seen a dead 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 August UO 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 car- 

 casses of dead pups, starved and emaciated, increased with appalling 

 rapidity until 12,000 were counted by the assistant agents. 



The agents report that they actually counted 12,000 dead pups on the 

 accessible portions of the rookeries to which they could go without dis- 

 turbing the seals, and after making due allowance for the portions not 

 visited at all, they believe that a fair estimate of the total number of 

 dead pups on the two islands of St. Paul and St. George in 1894 would 

 aggregate 20,000. (See report of Joseph 13. Crowley, 1894.) 



And .Mr. Joseph B. Crowley tells us that 



Every precaution was taken to count only such as appeared to have died late in 

 the season. None of the small young pups which showed decay and bore the appear- 

 ance of having died early in the breeding season were counted. * I do not 

 make recklessly the statement of the death of pups Irom starvation. There is posi- 

 tive proof of it. I witnessed the beginning of its disastrous results the last of 

 August before leaving the islands. Visiting the rookeries in person, I found hundreds 

 of pups which had lately died. They bore every appearance of having died of starva- 

 tion. Hundreds that were yet alive were so wasted and weak they could scarcely 

 drag themselves over the rocks and would not attempt to get out of the way when 

 approached. (Report of J. B. Crowley, 1894.) 



