SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 75 



saw but few or none. That, although there were some few drowned in 

 the surf during heavy wind storms, or trampled to death occasionally 

 by the fighting bulls, it was not until the pelagic sealer appeared in 

 Bering Sea that dead pups were found by hundreds and by thousands 

 and sometimes by the acre. 



DEAD PUPS ON THE ROOKERIES. 



Dead pups, which seemed to have starved to death, grew very numerous on the 

 rookeries these latter years, and I noticed when driving the bachelor seal for killing, 

 as we started them op from the beach, that many small pups, half starved, apparently 

 motherless, had wandered away from the breeding grounds and become mixed with 

 the killable seals. The natives called my attention to these waifs, saying that it did 

 not use to be so, and that the mothers were dead, otherwise they would be upon the 

 breeding grounds. (H. X. Clark, lessees' agent.) 



There were a good many dead pups on the rookeries every year I was on the island, 

 and they seemed to grow more numerous from year to year, because the rookeries 

 were all the time growing smaller, and the dead pups in the latter years were more 

 numerous in proportion to the live ones. (Alex. Hausson, sealer.) 



The seals were apparently subject to no diseases; the pups were always fat and 

 healthy, the dead ones very rarely seen on or about the rookeries prior to 1884. Upon 

 my return to the islands in 1886 I was told by my assistants and the natives that a 

 very large number of pups had perished the preceding season, a part of them dying 

 upon the islands and others being washed ashore, all seeming to have starved to death. 

 The same thing occurred in 1886 and in each of the following years to and including 

 1889. Even before I left the islands, in August, 1886, 1887, and 1888, 1 saw hundreds 

 of half-starved, bleating, emaciated pups wandering aimlessly about in search of 

 their dams, and presenting a most pitiable appearance. (H. H. Mclntyre, general 

 manager.) 



But facts came under my observation that soon led me to what I believe to be the 

 true cause of destruction. For instance, during the period of my residence on St. 

 George Island, down to the year 1884, there was always a number of dead pups, the 

 number of which I can not give exactly, as it varied from year to year and was 

 dependent upon accidents or the de^tructiveness of storms. Young seals do not know 

 how to swim at birth, nor do they learn how for six weeks or two months after 

 birth, and therefore are at the mercy of the waves during stormy weather. But from 

 the year 1884 down to the period when I left St. George Island there was a marked 

 increase in the number of dead pups, amounting, perhaps, to a trebling of the num- 

 bers observed in former years, so that I would estimate the number of dead pups in 

 the year 1887 at about 5,0i)() or 7,000 as a maximum. 



During my last two or three years I also noticed among the number of dead 

 pups an increase of at least 70 per cent of those which were emaciated and poor, 

 and in my judgment they died from want of nourishment, their mothers having been 

 killed while away from the island feeding, because it is a fact that pups drowned 

 or killed by accidents were most invariably fat. Learning further, through the Lon- 

 don sales, of the increase in the pelagic sealing, it became my firm conviction that the 

 constant increase in the number of dead pups and the decrease in the number of 

 marketable seals and breeding females found on the islands during the years 1885, 

 1886, and 1887 were caused by the destruction of female seals in the open sea, either 

 before or after giving birth to the pups. The mother seals go to feeding grounds 

 distant from the islands, and I can only account for the number of starved pups by 

 supposing that their mothers are killed while feeding. (T. F. Morgan, lessees' agent.) 



TIME OF APPEARANCE OF DEAD PUPS. 



The loss of life of pup seals on the rookeries up to about 1884 or 1885 was compara- 

 tively slight, and was generally attributed to the death of the mother seal from 

 natural causes or from their natural enemies in the water, or, as sometimes hap- 

 pened, sudden storms with heavy surfs rolling in from certain directions onto the 

 Breeding rookeries; but never at any time would a sufficient number of pups be 

 killed to make it the subject of speu-ial comment either among the natives or the 

 employees of the company. (W. S. Hereford, M. D., resident physician.) 



Between 1874 and 1883 predatory vessels occasionally appeared in Bering Sea, 

 among them the Cyynet in 1874 and the San Diego in 1876, but the whole number of 

 seals destroyed by such vessels was small, and had no appreciable effect upon the 



