244 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



when available, under natural conditions. Rowley adds that when white 

 men appeared on the scene there were probably 1000 times as many 

 sea-lions and 10,000 times as many fishes as there are now. Therefore 

 the reduction seems to be due to man, not to sea-lions and seals, and 

 killing all the sea-lions and seals would make no appreciable difference 

 in the number of fishes in the sea. 27 The few fishes. taken by the com- 

 paratively small number of pinnipeds, from the vast swarms of fishes 

 swimming from place to place in the ocean, are a very small percent- 

 age, while the commercial salmon fishermen, with nets and traps, take 

 fish by the hundreds of tons each season, as they enter the rivers to 

 spawn, thus preventing reproduction. A questionnaire sent to the seal 

 and sea-lion hunters of Oregon by the Port Orford Chamber of Com- 

 merce is said to have brought replies unanimously favoring the re- 

 moval of the bounty, as "the seals and sea-lions are not destructive to 

 commercial fish and fishing," their food, as listed by the hunters, con- 

 sisting of species of little or no commercial value, including skates, 

 ling cod, snappers, octopuses, squawfish, redfish and crabs. 28 



The sea-lions had been greatly reduced by the attacks of the oil and 

 hide industries before oil derived from mammals was so largely dis- 

 placed in commerce by petroleum products. Besides the oil and hides, 

 the "trimmings" (genitalia, lips with "whiskers" attached, and gall 

 bladder) have been in great demand. The genitalia have been exten- 

 sively used in China in the manufacture of a "rejuvenating decoction" 

 for aged mandarins, the whiskers for ornaments and cleaning the 

 stems of opium pipes, the gall sacs for medicinal purposes. Many have 

 been killed illegally just for the trimmings, which can be easily hidden 

 from the officers, the carcasses and hides being left in the water. 29 

 The Steller sea-lion was formerly of great importance to the natives of 

 Alaska. In 1872 it was estimated that there were from 20,000 to 

 25,000 of them on St. Paul Island and from 7000 to 8000 on St. 

 George, but in 1923 there were only a few hundred left. 30 



The northern sea-elephants or elephant-seals (Mirounga angusti- 

 rostris) were once abundant on the Pacific Coast, but were so assidu- 

 ously hunted for their oil that they have become too scarce for profita- 

 ble hunting. 31 The production of sea-elephant oil from 1803 to 1889 



"Rowley, Life history of the sea-lions on the California coast, Journ. Mam- 

 malogy, x, 1-36, 1929. 



28 California Fish and Game, xvi, 185-186, 191, 1930. 



29 Rowley, Journ. Mammalogy, x, 1-36, 1929. 



30 Preble, Mammals of Pribilof Islands, N. Amer. Fauna, No. 46, 1923. 

 81 Lucas, Ann. Kept. Smithsonian hist, for 1889, pp. 616-618, 



