AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 333 



In view, therefore, of all these facts, I have no hesitation in say- 

 ing, quite confidently, that under the present rules and regulations 

 governing the sealing interests on these islands, the increase or 

 diminution of the seal-life thereon will amount to nothing in the 

 future ; that the seals will exist, as they do exist, in all time to 

 come at about the same number and condition recorded by this 

 presentation of the author. 



By reference to the habit of the fur-seal, which I have discussed 

 at length, it is now plain and beyond doubt that two-thirds of all 

 the males which are born, and they are eqvial in numbers to the 

 females born, are never permitted by the remaining third, strong- 

 est by natural selection, to land upon the same breeding-ground 

 with the females, which always herd thereupon en masse. Hence 

 this great band of "bachelor" seals, or "holluschickie," so fitly 

 termed, when it visits the island, is obliged to live apart wholly — 

 sometimes and in some places, miles away from the rookeries ; and, 

 by this admirable method of nature are those seals which can be 

 killed without injury to the rookeries selected and held aside of 

 their own volition, so that the natives can visit and take them with- 

 out disturbing, to the least degree, that entire quiet of those breed- 

 ing-grounds where the stock is perpetuated. 



The manner in which the natives capture and drive up "hollu- 

 schickie " from the hauling-grounds to the slaughter-fields near the 

 two villages of St. Paul and St. George, and elsewhere on the isl- 

 ands, cannot be improved upon. It is in this way : At the begin- 

 ning of every sealing-season, that is, during May and June, large 

 bodies of the young " bachelor " seals do not haul up on land very 

 far from the water — a few rods at the most — and, when these first 

 arrivals are sought after, the natives, to capture them, are obliged 

 to approach slyly and run quickly between the dozing seals and the 

 surf, before they can take alarm and bolt into the sea ; in this man- 

 ner a dozen Aleutes, running down the sand beach of English Bay, 

 in the early morning of some June day, will turn back from the 

 water thousands of seals, just as the mould-board of a plough lays 

 over and back a furrow of earth. Wlien the sleeping seals are first 

 startled, they arise, and, seeing men between them and the water, 

 immediately turn, lope and scramble rapidly back up and over the 

 land ; the natives then leisurely walk on the flanks and in the rear 

 of this drove thus secured, directing and driving it over to the kill- 

 ing-grounds^ close by the village. The task of getting up early of 



