334 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



Veniaminov, by whom was published the only statement of any kind in regard to the killing on 

 these islands from 1817 to 1837, the year when he finished his work, I find that he makes a record 

 of slaughter of seals in the year 1836, of 4,052, which were killed and taken for their skins ; but if 

 the natives' statements are right, then only 50 seals were left on the island for 1837, in which year, 

 however, 4,220 were again killed, according to the bishop's table, according to which there was 

 also a steady increase in the size of this return from that date along up to 1850, when the Rus- 

 sians governed their catch by the market alone, always having more seals than they knew what 

 to do with. 



Again, in this connection, the natives say that until 1847, the practice on these islands was 

 to kill indiscriminately both females and males for skins ; but after this year, 1847, the strict 

 respect now paid to the breeding-seals, and exemption of all females, was enforced for the first 

 time, and has continued up to date. 



Thus it will be seen that there is, frankly stated, nothing to guide to a fair or even an approxi- 

 mate estimate as to the numbers of the fur-seals on these two islands, prior to my labor. 



MANNER OF COMPUTING THE NUMBER OF SEALS. After a careful study of the subject, 

 during three entire consecutive seasons, and a confirmatory review of it in 1876, I feel confident 

 that the following figures and surveys will, upon their own face, speak authoritatively as to their 

 truthful character. 



At the close of my investigation, during the first season of my labor on the ground, in 1872, 

 the fact became evident that the breeding-seals obeyed an imperative and instinctive natural 

 law of distribution a law recognized by each and every seal upon the rookeries, prompted 

 by a fine consciousness of necessity to its own well-being. The breeding-grounds occupied by them 

 were, therefore, invariably covered by seals in exact ratio, greater or less, as the area upon 

 which they rested was larger or smaller. They always covered this ground evenly, never crowd- 

 ing in at one place here, to scatter out there. The seals lie just as thickly together, where the 

 rookery is boundless in its eligible unoccupied 'area at their rear and by them, as they do in the 

 little strips which are abruptly cut off and narrowed by rocky walls behind. For instance, on a 

 rod of ground, under the face of bluffs which hemmed it in to the land from the sea, there are 

 just as many seals, no more and no less, as will be found on any other rod of rookery-ground 

 throughout the whole list, great and small ; always exactly so many seals, under any and all cir- 

 cumstances to a given area of breeding-ground. There are just as many cows, bulls, and pups 

 on a square rod at Nah Speel, near the village, where, in 1874, all told, there were only seven or 

 eight thousand, as there are on any square. rod at Northeast Point, where a million of them con- 

 gregate. 



This fact being determined, it is evident that, just in proportion as the breeding-grounds of the 

 fur-seal on ihese islands expand or contract in area from their present dimensions, the seals will 

 increase or diminish in number. 



My discovery, at the close of the season of 1872, of this law of distribution, gave me at once 

 the clew I was searching for in order to take steps by which I could arrive at a sound conclusion 

 as to the entire number of seals herding on the island. 



I noticed, and time has confirmed my observation, that the period for taking these boundaries 

 of the rookeries, so as to show this exact margin of expansion at the week of its greatest volume, 

 or when they are as full as they are to be for the season, is between the 10th and 20th of July of 

 every year; not a day earlier, and not many days later. After the 20th of July the regular system 

 of compact, even organization breaks up. The seals then scatter out in pods or clusters, the pups 



