AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 263 



saw him in 1872, and made careful drawings of him in order that 

 I might recognize his individuality, should he appear again in the 

 following year, and when that time rolled by, I found him not ; he 

 failed to reappear, and the natives acquiesced in his absence. Of 

 course it was impossible to say that he was dead when there were 

 ten thousand rousing, fighting bulls to the right, left, and below 

 us, under our eyes, for we could not approach for inspection. Still, 

 if these animals came each to a certain place in any general fash- 

 ion, or as a rule, I think there would be no difficulty in recognizing 

 the fact ; the natives certainly would do so ; as it is, they do not. 

 I think it very likely, however, that the older bulls come back to 

 the same common rookery ground where they spent the previous 

 season ; but they are obliged to take up their position on it just as 

 the circumstances attending their arrival will permit, such as find- 

 ing other seals which have arrived before them, or of being whipped 

 out by stronger rivals from their old stands. 



It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Kussians 

 themselves, with the object of testing that mooted query, during 

 the later years of their possession of the islands, drove up a num- 

 ber of young males from Lukannon, cut off their ears, and turned 

 them out to sea again. The following season, when the droves 

 came in from the " hauling-grounds " to the slaughtering-fields, 

 quite a number of those cropped seals were in the drives, but in- 

 stead of being found all at one place the place from whence they 

 were driven the year before they were scattered examples of crop- 

 pies from every point on the island. The same experiment was 

 again made by our people in 1870 (the natives having told them of 

 such prior undertaking), and they went also to Lukannon, drove up 

 one hundred young males, cut off their left ears, and set them free 

 in turn. Of this number, during the summer of 1872, when I was 

 there, the natives found in. their driving of seventy-five thousand 

 seals from the different hauling-grounds of St. Paul up to the vil- 

 lage killing-grounds, two on Novastoshnah rookery, ten miles north 

 of Lukannon, and two or three from English Bay and Tolstoi rook- 

 eries, six miles west by water ; one or two were taken on St. George 

 Island, thirty-six miles to the southeast, and not one from Lukan- 

 non was found among those that were driven from there ; probably, 

 had all the young males on the two islands this season been exam- 

 ined, the rest of the croppies that had returned from the perils of 

 the deep, whence they sojourned during the winter, would have 



