SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 163 



smooth ground, and the eye could glide over patches of ground hun- 

 dreds of feet in extent which were thickly strewn with carcasses. 



Where the water side of the rookeries, as tit Northeast Point and the 

 Reef (south of the village), was on rocky ground, the immense num- 

 ber of dead was not so apparent, but a closer examination showed that 

 the dead were there in equally great number scattered among the rocks. 

 In some localities the ground was so thickly strewn with the dead that 

 one had to pick his way carefully in order to avoid stepping on the car- 

 casses. The great mass of dead in all cases was within a short dis- 

 tance of the water's edge. The patches of dead would commence at 

 the water's edge and stretch in a wide swath up into the rookery. 

 Amongst the immense masses of dead were seldom to be found the car- 

 casses of full-grown seals, but the carcasses were those of pups or 

 young seals born that year. I can give no idea of the exact number of 

 dead, but 1 believe that they could only be numbered by the thousands 

 on each rookery. Along the water's edge, and scattered amongst the 

 dead, were quite a number of live pups, which were in an emaciated 

 condition. Many had hardly the strength to drag themselves out of 

 one's way, thus contrasting strongly, both in appearance and actions, 

 with the plump condition and active, aggressive conduct of the healthy 

 appearing pups. 



The majority of the pups, like all healthy nursing animals, were plump 

 and fairly rolling in fat. 1 have watched the female seals draw up out of 

 the water, each pick out its pup from the hundreds of young seals sport- 

 ing near the water's edge, and with them scramble to a clear spot on the 

 rookery, and lying down give them suck. Although 1 saw pups nurs- 

 ing in a great many cases, yet I never saw one of the sickly looking 

 pups receiving attention from the female. They seemed to be deserted. 



The cause of the great mortality among the seal pups seemed to me to 

 have ceased to act in great part before my first visits to the rookeries, 

 for subsequent visits did not show as great an increase in the masses 

 : of dead as I would have expected had the causes still been in active 

 operation. It seemed to me that there were fewer sickly looking pups 

 at each subsequent visit. This grew to be more and more the case as 

 the season advanced. When 1 visited the rookeries for the purpose of 

 examining the dead bodies it was with extreme difficulty that carcasses 

 could be found fresh enough to permit of a satisfactory examination. 

 I I examined a large number of carcasses. All showed an absence of 

 fatty tissue between the skin and muscular tissue. The omen turn in 

 I all cases was destitute of fat. These are the positions where fat is 

 usually present in all animals. Well-nourished young animals always 

 have a large amount of fat in these localities. The few carcasses which 

 were found in a fair state of preservation were examined more thor- 

 oughly. The stomachs were found empty and contracted, but pre- 

 sented no evidence of disease. The intestines were empty, save in a 

 few cases, where small amounts of fecal matter were found in the large 

 intestines. A careful examination of the intestines failed to discover 

 any evidence of disease. The heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys were in 

 a healthy condition. 



Such is the evidence on which I have founded my opinion that the 

 cause of the great mortality during 1891 among the young seals on 

 St. Paul Island, Bering Sea, was caused by the deprivation of mothers 7 

 milk. The result of my investigation is that there was great mortality 

 exclusively among nursing seals. Second, the cause of this mortality 

 seemed to have been abated pan passu with the abatement of sea seal- 

 ing. Third, the presence of emaciated, sickly looking pups which 



