NOTES ON CERTAIN PINNIPEDS, 



WITH DATA RESPECTING THEIR PRESENT COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE. 



By C. H. TOWNSEND. 



THE history of the world's seal fisheries is largely one of 

 wasted resources. Very few sealing industries have been 

 conducted according to methods calculated to perpetuate the race. 

 From a commercial point of view, seals are the most important 

 of the carnivorous animals. As a group they are probably also 

 the most abundant of the larger wild mammals at the present 

 time. It is doubtful if the herds of bison in America and of 

 antelopes in Africa ever exceeded them in point of numbers. 

 They are of world-wide distribution. Their pursuit has been 

 carried on in the Antarctic as well as in the Arctic, but the 

 sealing grounds of the Antarctic regions have long been ex- 

 hausted commercially. Although the fur-seal fisheries of the 

 North Pacific have received much international consideration 

 during recent years, they are not the only seal fisheries of im- 

 portance. 



Ncivfoiindland Seal. — The Newfoundland sealing industry is 

 more than one hundred years old. It appears to have reached 

 its height about forty years ago, when there were about 400 sail- 

 ing vessels and 13,000 men employed. Since that time the catch 

 of seals has decreased and has varied from year to year. The 

 sailing vessels have been replaced by steamers whose numbers, 

 at the present time, vary from twenty to twenty-five and employ 

 from 3,000 to 4,000 men. The industry is based on the Green- 

 land or harp seal (Phoca grociilondica), which has a very wide 

 distribution and is probably the most abundant of any species 

 of seal. A small lumiber of hooded seals (CystopJiora cristata) 

 is included in the annual catch. It is taken upon the Arctic ice, 

 from Newfoundland to Baffin Bay, and from (Greenland across to 

 the perpetual ice fields north of Europe. The greatest catch 

 of seals made in one year was in 1844, when the number reached 

 nearly 700,000. During the past six years the catch has varied 

 from 268,881 to 353.276. The steamers employed are of con- 

 siderable size, some of them of soo tons burden. The seals are 



