April 28, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



601 



The rest are distributed over a considerable 

 niimber of widely separated fields, for the most 

 part unimportant. 



The adult male fur seal attains a weight of 

 400 to 500 pounds, and if this were the class of 

 animal killed, a considerable deposit of bone 

 would have resulted from the carcasses of the 

 five million animals. It is, however, the im- 

 mature males of two and three years that have 

 been killed. These are animals of 50 to 60 

 pounds weight and their bones still contain a 

 large proportion of animal matter. The seal 

 is an animal adapted for life in the water, like 

 a fish, and its bones are small and fragile. In 

 a green state they constitute perhaps ten 

 pounds of the weight. Weathered for a few 

 seasons on the sands of St. Paul, or otherwise 

 dried out, they would not exceed three to five 

 pounds in weight. In other words 500 of the 

 animals might give a ton of bone, if it was 

 regularly cared for. Left to chance, the yield 

 would naturally be less. The five million ani- 

 mals would therefore at best represent about 

 10,000 tons of bone, or at the price of $35 a 

 ton suggested, a total value of $350,000. Half 

 of this would be found in the St. Paul village 

 deposit. This is on the assumption that some- 

 thing like the full product of bone could be 

 recovered. 



It would not be all profit; there would be 

 expense in getting the bone out, and especially 

 in shipping it to some commercial port. The 

 Pribilof Islands have no harbors. Ships must 

 anchor a mile or so off shore and all cargo 

 must be lightered in or out in small boats. 

 The islands are small and a few hours' stiff 

 wind will break up a landing any day, twenty- 

 four hours', all landings. On the approach of 

 a storm the ship must pull anchor and put to 

 sea. Fogs are frequent and persistent and a 

 vessel may have to wait days for an observa- 

 tion of the sun to enable it to fijid its way 

 back to the islands. In the summer of 1914 

 the supply ship of the department of com- 

 merce spent 23 days, at a cost to the govern- 

 ment of $250 a day, about these island in land- 

 ing a cargo of a few score tons of freight. 

 The revenue cutter service in 1911 left the 

 bones of a good ship on one of the reefs of St. 



Paul. The getting of this supply of bone out 

 (assuming that its exists) would be a thing 

 fraught with difficulty and danger. 



But the most probable thing about the whole 

 matter is that the bone deposit does not exist. 

 In the season of 1912 the Virriter witnessed the 

 sinking of a six foot trench through a con- 

 siderable portion of the main field of alleged 

 deposit for the purpose of laying a water pipe. 

 ISTo bone was found except at or near the sur- 

 face and here in negligible quantity. This was 

 a matter of surprise and conunent because on 

 theoretical grounds we had expected to find 

 layer on layer of bones representing the suc- 

 cessive annual killings which had been going 

 on here for over a century. Nothing, how- 

 ever, was found but the coarse lava sand 

 which underlies the field to a depth of fifteen 

 to twenty feet. Into this sand, evidently, the 

 rain has washed the dust of the bones as they 

 quickly disintegrated. 



A more tangible thing associated with this 

 great killing field of St. Paul Island is the oil, 

 rendered by the elements from the blubber 

 encasing the seal carcasses. This has soaked 

 into the ground and mingled with the water 

 that underlies the field giving to it the ap- 

 pearance of thick brown soup. The villagers 

 of St. Paul have had to locate their wells far 

 beyond this field to get pure water. A claim 

 that there were millions of dollars' worth of 

 seal oil stored in reservoirs underneath the 

 Pribilof Island killing fields would have had 

 a more solid basis of fact to rest upon. Per- 

 haps the revelation of this great natural re- 

 source is held in reserve. 



One interesting thing in connection with 

 these rather mythical bone deposits of the seal 

 islands is that since 1912 no additions have 

 been made to them. The fur seal law of that 

 year stopped commercial sealing. In 1911 the 

 last deposit — the bones of 12,000 seals — was 

 laid down; it represented about thirty tons 

 of dried bone, worth, at $35 a ton, about 

 $1,050. Incidentally the 12,000 seal skins 

 taken from these animals brought the govern- 

 ment $35 each, or the reputed price of a ton 

 of raw groimd bone. The value of the seal 

 skins, which may in this case be considered a 



