SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



Professor Elliott is ti naturalist, and a very good one. He is thor- 

 oughly familiar with the size, form, color, comparative anatomy, domes- 

 tic habits, and whatever goes to make up the natural history of the 

 seal. He is tolerably familiar with the seal as viewed from the hunter 

 or business man's standpoint. He is also fairly capable of deducing from 

 given facts a theory in regard to the increase or decrease of the seal. 

 Given correct premises, he would perhaps come as near the truth in 

 his deduction as the average observer. But when his premises are 

 wrong, his deductions are more mischievous than those of the average 

 niaii, because he asseverates his findings with such positiveness, and 

 such an air of knowing all about it, as to carry the investigator along 

 with him to the pitfalls digged by theory from wrong hypotheses. 



He says, in brief, that there was overdriving in 1879, none in the two 

 following years, beginning again in 188U and continuing "until the end 

 is abruptly reached in the season of 1890." As he writes forcibly in 

 the same connection against the practice of driving the long distance 

 from Southwest Bay (Zapadnie) to the village killing ground about 4 

 miles pointing out most disastrous effects from this practice, I suppose 

 he means by "overdriving" the driving too great distance. If this is 

 it 1 quite agree with him, and always have, and for that reason, except 

 on very rare occasions, did not allow seals to be driven the long dis- 

 tances he describes, and it has never been habitually done. Boats were 

 almost invariably sent to Southwest Bay and carts to Halfway Point 

 to bring in the skins, and the animals were as invariably killed, dur- 

 ing the last ten years of the Alaska Commercial Company's lease, as 

 near the rookeries as seemed prudent. The windmill he fights through 

 several paragraphs of alleged "reasons' 7 is less worthy of attack than 

 Don Quixote's. Jt exists only in his imagination. 



Then, the end was not lk abruptly reached." I repeatedly pointed out 

 to our company and to the special Treasury agents, during the seasons 

 of 1887, 1888, and 1889, that the seals were rapidly diminishing, and 

 that in order to get the full quota allowed by law we were obliged to 

 kill, in increasing numbers in each of those years, animals that should 

 have been allowed to attain greater size; and, finally, the catch of 1889 

 was mostly of this class. If they had been contented with the same 

 class in 1890 a much larger catch could have been obtained. 



Again he is in error in saying that marauding in Bering Sea began 

 in 1880. It commenced in 1884 with a catch of 4,000 skins, and was 

 followed with a take of almost 10,000 in 1885. 



This brings us to the second reason given by him for the decrease, to 

 wit, "the shooting of seals (mostly females) in the open waters of the 

 Korth Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea." And here he strikes the key 

 note of what should have been his warning, but he strikes it so flat as 

 to throw his chorus quite out of tune; but he was not there present on 

 the islands during any of those six years of active poaching prior to 

 the season just past, nor, in fact, for several years previous to those six 

 years, and does not know what he is talking about. His second " reason " 

 should have been his first, and I assert most positively, with knowledge 

 drawn from an accurate personal cognizance of the facts, that the dimi- 

 nution of the seal was exactly coincident in the time of the decrease, 

 and in its ratio from year to year, with the time and extent of the pirat- 

 ical marauding of the Canadian and American vessels in the waters of 

 Bering Sea, and prior to the beginning of such marauding was not 

 perceptible and did not exist. 



I regret that Professor Elliott did not urge this one true reason with 

 all the strong force of which he is capable, because it is fully time that 



