352 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



thereon; provided, also, that the fur-seals are not visited by any plague, or pests, or any abnormal 

 cause for their destruction, which might be beyond the control of men; and to which, like any 

 other great body of animal life, they must ever be subjected to the danger of."* 



Loss OF LIFE SUSTAINED BY THE YOUNG SEALS. From my calculations, given above, it 

 will be seen that 1,000,000 pups, or young seals, in round numbers, are born upon these islands of 

 the Pribylov Group every year; of this million, one half are males. These 500,000 young males, 

 before they leave the islands for sea, during October and November, and when they are between 

 five and six months old, fat and hardy, have suffered but a trifling loss in numbers, say one per 

 cent., while on and about the islands of their birth ; surrounding which, and upon which, they 

 have no enemies whatever to speak of; but, after they get well down to the Pacific, spread out 

 over an immense area of watery highways in quest of piscatorial food they form the most helpless 

 of their kind to resist or elude the murderous teeth and carnivorous attacks of basking sharks t 

 and killer-whales-! By these agencies, during their absence from the islands until their reap- 

 pearance in the following year, and in July, they are so perceptibly diminished in number that I 

 do not think, fairly considered, more than one half of the legion which left the ground of their 

 birth, last October, came up the next July to these favorite landing-places; that is, only 250,000 of 

 them return out of the 500,000 born last year. The same statement, in every respect, applies to the 

 going and the coming of the 500,000 female pups, which are identical in size, shape, and behavior. 



As yearlings, however, these 250,000 survivors of last year's birth have become strong, lithe, 

 and active swimmers ; and, when they again leave the hanling-groiands as before, in the fall, they 

 are fully as able as are the older class to take care of themselves; and when they reappear next 

 year, at least 225,000 of them safely return in the second season after birth ; from this on I believe 

 that they live out their natural lives of fifteen to twenty years each ; the death-rate now caused 

 by the visitation of marine enemies not affecting them, in the aggregate, but slightly. And again, 

 the same will hold good touching the females, the average natural life of which, however, I take 

 to be only nine or ten years each. 



* The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congregations of Pinnipedia was one that 

 was constant, in my mind, when on the ground and among them. I have found in the British Annals (Flemings), on 

 page 17, an extract from the notes of Dr. Trail : " In 1833 I inquired for my old acquaintances, the seals of the Hole 

 of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years before they had totally deserted the island, and had only 

 within the last few months begun to reappear. * * * About fifty years ago multitudes of their carcasses were cast 

 ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, and numbers were found at sea in a sickly state. 1 ' 

 This note of Trail is the only record which I can find of a fatal epidemic among the seals ; it is not reasonable to sup- 

 pose that the Pribylov rookeries have never suffered from distempers in the past, or are not to, in the future, simply 

 because no occasion seems to have risen during the comparatively brief period of their human domination. 



t Somniosug microcephalus. Some of these sharks are of very large size, and when caught by the Indiaus of the north- 

 west coast, basking or asleep on the surface of the sea, they will, when transfixed by the natives' harpoons, take a 

 whole fleet of canoes in tow and run swiftly with them several hours before exhaustion enables the savages to finally 

 dispatch them. A Hudson Bay trader, William Manson (at Fort Alexander, in 1865), told me that his father had killed 

 one in the smooth waters of Millbank Sound, which measured 24 feet in length, and its liver alone yielded 36 gallons 

 of oil. The Somniaeus lies motionless for long intervals in calm waters of the North Pacific, just under and at the surface, 

 with its dorsal fin clearly exposed above; what havoc such a carnivorous fish would be likely to effect in a "pod" of 

 young fur-seals, can be better imagined than described. 



{ Orca gladiator. While revolving this particular line of inquiry in my mind when, on the ground and amoug the 

 seals, I involuntarily looked constantly for some sign of disturbance in the sea which would indicate the presence of 

 an enemy; and, save seeing a few examples of the Orca, I never detected anything ; if the killer- whale was common 

 here, it would be patent to the most casual eye, because it is the habit of this ferocious cetacean to swim so closely at the 

 surface as to show its peculiar sharp, dorsal fin high above the water ; possibly a very superficial observer could and 

 would confound the long, trenchant iluke of the Orca with the stubby node upon the spine of the humpback whale, 

 which that animal exhibits only when it is about to dive. Humpbacks feed around the islands, but not commonly 

 they are the exception; they do not, however, molest the seals in any manner whatever; and little squads of these 

 pinnipeds seem to delight themselves by swimming in endless circles around and under the huge bodies of those whales, 

 frequently leaping out and entirely over the cetacean's back, as witnessed on one occasion by myself and the crew of 

 the Reliance, off the coast of Kadiak, June, 1874. 



