OCEANIC MAMMALS 427 



began during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. 

 Alexander Dairy mple, writing in 1775, reports that there was 

 at the Falkland Islands an abundance of ... fur seals in 

 'such numbers that they killed eight or nine hundred in a day 

 with bludgeons on one small Islot.' ' : At present fur seals are 

 no longer found on the Falklands, but the date of their disap- 

 pearance can not have been very long after the beginning of 

 the last century, for already soon after the American Revolu- 

 tion New England and British sealers were pushing their search 

 for pelts to South Georgia, and then to the South Orkneys and 

 the South Shetlands. The Portuguese were also according to 

 Forster engaged in this pursuit in its earlier years. About 

 1800, sealing at South Georgia had already about reached its 

 peak. In that year, the Aspasia, of New York, one of 18 

 sealing vessels at the island, "secured the season's prize catch 

 of 57,000 fur seal skins. This record was never again equalled, 

 although the hunting evidently continued, for when . . . 

 Bellingshausen sailed along the blustery, uncharted south 

 coast of the island in December, 1819, he met with two English 

 three-masters in one of the fjords. These ships had already 

 been there four months, or through the southern winter, and 

 had carried on a profitable business." Five years later, in 

 1824, when Capt. James Weddell visited the island, he found 

 that seals of all kinds had become almost extinct. He men- 

 tions that the American sealers traded these skins to China 

 where they frequently brought $5 or $6 apiece. He estimates 

 that not less than 1,200,000 of the hides had been gathered 

 there since the opening of the sealing exploitation. Fur seals 

 are believed to have been practically exterminated at South 

 Georgia about 1874, "but rumor has it that a New England 

 vessel made a small illegal catch there in 1907." In 1874 no 

 less than 1,450 skins were taken, and in the year following 600. 

 In 1892, according to Lonnberg (1906), 135 fur seals were 

 killed at this island "and they may have been the very last 

 ones," for in 1905 "a Chilenian sailing vessel visited the coasts 

 of this island," hunting in every cove and corner for fur seals 

 but found none. However, Dr. Murphy records that about the 

 middle of February, 1915, some Norwegian whalers discovered 

 a single fur seal, evidently a straggler, on the beach near the 

 eastern end of South Georgia, and unfortunately killed it. 

 With this exception no fur seal has been definitely known from 



