328 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



grounds every ^^ear. We may, therefore, properly look upon this 

 aggregate of four and five millions of fur-seals, as we see them every 

 season on these Pribylov Islands, as that maximum limit of increase 

 assigned to them by natural law. The great equilibrium which 

 nature holds in life upon this earth must be sustained at St. Paul 

 as well as elsewhere. 



Think of the enormous food-consumption of these rookeries and 

 hauling-grounds ; what an immense quantity of iinny i^rey must 

 pass down their voracious throats as every year rolls by ! A creature 

 so full of life, strung with nerves, muscles like bands of steel, can- 

 not live on air, or absorb it from the sea. Their food is fish, to the 

 practical exclusion of all other diet. I have never seen them touch, 

 or disturb with the intention of touching it, one solitary example in 

 the flocks of water-fowl which rest upon the surface of the water 

 all about the islands. I was especially careful in noting this, be- 

 cause it seemed to me that the canine ai'mature of their mouths 

 must suggest flesh for food at times as well as fish ; but fish we 

 know they eat. Whole windrows of the heads of cod and wolf- 

 fishes, bitten off by these animals at the nape, were washed up on 

 the south shore of St. George during a gale in the summer of 1873. 

 This pelagic decapitation evidently marked the progress and the 

 appetite of a band of fur-seals to the windward of the island, as 

 they passsed into and through a stray school of these fishes. 



How many pounds per diem is required by an adult seal, and 

 taken by it when feeding, is not certain in my mind. Judging 

 from the appetite, however, of kindred animals, such as sea-lions 

 fed in confinement at Woodward's Gardens, San Francisco, I can 

 safely say that forty pounds for a full-grown fur-seal is a fair allow- 

 ance, with at least ten or twelve pounds per diem to every adult 

 female, and not much less, if any, to the rapidly growing pups and 

 young "holltischickie." Therefore, this great body of four and 

 five millions of hearty, active animals which we know on the Seal 

 Islands, must consume an enormous amount of such food every 

 year. They cannot average less than ten pounds of fish per diem, 

 which gives the consvimption, as exhibited by their appetite, of over 

 six million tons of fish every year ! What wonder, then, that nature 

 should do something to hold these active fishermen in check.* 



* I feel confident that I have placed this average of fish eaten per diem by 

 each seal at a starvation allowance, or, in other words, it is a certain minimum 



