224 ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY 



important commercial animal but it has been a subject of inter- 

 national controversy, as will be noted below. 



The natural history of the fur-seal is interesting and must be 

 understood before the economic problems involved can be handled. 



The home of the Alaskan fur-seal (if we call "home" the place where 

 it breeds) is along the rocky shores of the Pribilof and other islands of 

 the Aleutian group. Here large herds of seals assemble for the short 

 summer season, the places of assemblage being known as " rookeries. " 

 The males are known as " bulls" and are enormously larger than 

 the females or "cows. " The young are known as "pups, " so that the 

 popular nomenclature is decidedly mixed. The bulls arrive at the 

 breeding grounds first, from the south, early in May; the height of 

 the season is the middle of July and the southern migration begins in Au- 

 gust. As the females arrive they are driven or carried bodily into groups 

 known as "harems." A harem consists of from one to a hundred or 

 more cows, presided over by a single old bull ; an average number for a 

 harem might be about thirty. The bulls fight over the possession 

 of the cows, the largest and the fiercest bulls securing the largest number 

 of cows. In these perpetual fights not only are the skins of the bulls 

 torn and ruined, but the cows and pups are often injured and even 

 killed. The young bulls that are not large and strong enough to secure 

 a harem are known as "bachelors," and it is these uninjured and, for 

 breeding purposes, useless bachelors that supply, or should supply, the 

 skins of commerce. 



The single young is born- soon after the arrival of the seals and the 

 cow is then served by the bull. Many pups are killed as noted above, 

 many die of starvation, and many of hookworm and other diseases. It 

 is probable that the killing of the extra males, say 95 out of every 100, 

 would, by diminishing the fighting, actually increase the prolificness 

 of the herd by diminishing the death-rate of the pups and injury to the 

 cows. 



The seals are killed with clubs, after being surrounded by a group of 

 men and driven to a flat "killing ground" where the desirable ones are 

 slaughtered and the rest are allowed to return to the sea. At the close 

 of the breeding season the seals start on their southward journey for 

 the winter which may extend as far south as California. It was during 

 this migration that the most destructive killing of seals by man took 

 place, beginning about 1881-2. This so-called "pelagic sealing" 



