ALASKA. 87 



From this subject of the maimer in which the sealing-busi- 

 ness is conducted on the ishxuds and elsewhere, we naturally 

 turn to the — 



IV . PRESENT CONDITION OF THE SEAL-LIFE AND ITS VALUE. 



A question frequently asked in regard to these islands is 

 this : "At the present rate of killing the seals, it will not be long 

 before they are exterminated; how much longer will they 

 last?" The answer is, that as long as matters are conducted 

 on the Seal Islands as they now are, one hundred thousand 

 male seals, under the age of five years and over one, may be 

 safely taken every year without the slightest injury to the regu- 

 lar birth-rate or natural increase, provided the animals are not 

 visited by any plague or pestileuce, or any such abnormal cause 

 for tbeir destruction, beyond the control of man, and to which, 

 like any other great body of animal life, they must ever be sub- 

 ject. 



From my calculatious already given it will be seen that a 

 million "pups," or youngseals,are born upon these islands every 

 year. Of this million, one-half are males. These 500,000 young 

 males leave the ishmdsfor sea, when they are between five and 

 six months old, very fat and hearty, having suflered but a tri- 

 fling loss in number (about 1 per cent.) while on and about the 

 islands, about which there are no enemies whatever; but after 

 they get well douu into the Pacific in quest of food, they form 

 the most helpless of their kind to resist or elude sharks, 

 killers, &c., and they are so diminished in number by these 

 natural enemies, that when they return to the Prybilov Islands 

 in the following year, July, they will not present more than one- 

 half of the number with which they left the ground of 

 their birth the previous season ; that is, li50,000. By this time 

 these survivors of last year's birth have become strong, active 

 swimmers, and when they leave again, as before, in the fall, 

 they are as able as any others of their older classes to take 

 care of themselves, and at least 225,000 of them safely return 

 in the second season after birth, and are very slightly diminished 

 after that during their natural lives of filteen to twenty years 

 each ; and the same will hold good with the females. 



Now, the number of bulls required for the annual stock of 

 225,000 virgin cdws, to be saved for this service every year, is by 

 their law and habit onlij onefificeuth of the number of cows, as 

 on all the breeding-grounds oue male will have ou an average 



