392 CALLORHINUS URSINUS NORTHERN FUR SEAL. 



" When the agent and employes of the company came to the 

 islands in 1871, they had no knowledge of the business, and had 

 to learn it of the natives, so that they naturally at first followed 

 the old routine, with only the difference that instead of confin- 

 ing the killing to the younger classes, as before, a larger per- 

 centage of ^ half-bulls,' or four- and five -year -olds, were killed. 

 The 75,000 Seals killed by the Eussians in 1867, the 250,000 

 killed by various parties in 1868, and the 85,000 taken by the 

 natives in 1869, being mostly young animals, the markets had 

 become so overstocked with small skins as to render them un- 

 salable, and the manufacturers in London notified the agent 

 of the Alaska Commercial Company that only large skins were 

 desirable; hence the agent selected for killing all the larger 

 Seals available. Seventy thousand of the quota of seventy- 

 five thousand were taken during the months of June and July, 

 the remainder being left to be supplied by the skuis of animals 

 required for food by the natives during the remainder of the 

 season. During this year (1871) no material changes were ob- 

 served in the movements of the Seals as compared with former 

 years. 



" This brings the history of the subject to the year 1872. The 

 product of 1871 had been sold in Europe, and the demand for 

 larger skins had become more imperative than before, and it 

 being in the interest of the lessees to suit their customers, they 

 instructed their agent residing at the islands, whose duty it was 

 to select the animals for killing, to take only large skins. Un- 

 der these instructions their agent, as far as possible, confined 

 the killing for skins to Seals of from four to six years old, and 

 often a seven-year-old got killed by straggling into the younger 

 groups to rest. The effect of killing the class that formed so 

 imjiortant an element in the reproduction of the species showed 

 itself in the diminished number doing service in the water along 

 the shore. The reserves also showed quite a perceptible de- 

 crease in number, in comparison with their number in 1869. 

 The female breeding Seals showed, through the increased space 

 occupied by them, an increase in numbers equivalent to 15 

 per cent, over their number in 1869, or an increase of 5 per 

 cent, a year, while the selection of the four-, five-, and six-year- 

 olds, instead of the younger as formerlj^, had spared so large a 

 number under four years of age that when the yearlings came 

 on shore the two classes united seemed to flood the island with 

 vheir living masses, thronging the beaches and spreading up the 



