DRIVES AND STAMPEDES. 363 



THE EXPERIMENTAL PUP. 



A strayed pup is foaiid on Zapadui a long way from any harem, among the 

 bachelors. It is a robust, healthy female, perhaps 3 weeks old, sleek and strong. It 

 is taken home for purposes of experimentation in starvation, as it can not fail to starve 

 to death where it is. The dead pups seen on the hauling ground among the bachelors 

 are evidently astrays like this one, having wandered away and starved, or else been 

 trampled upon by the half bulls and bachelors. 



In counting dead pups experience shows that it is very difficult to distinguish 

 surely the dead from the sleeping pups. They stretch out and assume in their sleep 

 positions similar to those in which dead pups are seen, and not infrequently the pup 

 you have decided to be dead will lift his head and go forth to play. At a long 

 distance there is also liability of mistaking a black half- buried stone for a dead pup 

 when half hidden in the sand. There are some of these among the dead pups on 

 Tolstoi. 



The drive from Zapadui is a very short one. The skins are brought to the village 

 in boats. Killings at Zapadni are made only when the weather permits this to be done. 



DRIVES AND STAMPEDES. 



Even if the treatment of holostiaki on the drives and killing grounds was 

 needlessly cruel, as has been alleged, it would affect the increase or decrease of seals 

 on the rookeries no more than the overdriving of street-car horses would affect the 

 breeding of flue colts. An injured animal would merely recover or die. The voluntary 

 racing and climbing the bachelors undertake for fun, for curiosity, or when alarmed 

 far exceeds the strain I have seen any driven animal undergo. Where an animal gets 

 its head crushed by a blow intended for another, as in the case of the yearling at 

 Polovina, that is simply the end of the animal. If the animal is only temporarily 

 stunned, it recovers and is none the worse. 



Stampedes of the rookeries are carefully avoided by the people on the islands; 

 but should they occur they are not necessarily serious or likely to be dangerous. The 

 cows do not flee willingly, except late in the season. They do not injure pups, and the 

 bulls devote all their time to preventing the escape of. the cows and to rounding up 

 the disorganized harems. As to the bulls,, the man does not live who could stampede 

 one in the height of the season. An old bull would not leave his place until his skull 

 was broken. Nothing frightens him, and he is as incapable of fear as he is of hunger 

 in the breeding season. This, however, is not true of those under 6 years of age, and 

 those under 7 can be driven. The so-called impotent bulls are not so through sex 

 exhaustion, but through broken bones, broken joints, hernia, or buckshot. It is to be 

 doubted if the functions of life outlast those of virility. The bulls with virgin harems 

 now are as fierce and virile as the beach masters were in the middle of July. 



GORBATOH ROOKERY. 



Prom the tip of the slope of Gorbatch a group of young seals was rounded up 

 which contained a number of young females, including the uppermost harem in charge 

 of the white half-albino buU to which reference has been made (July 27). 



By means of a slip noose fastened to a long pole in such a manner that it could 

 be slipped over the head of the seal and then drawn taut, the men were able to draw 

 15184, PT 2 8 



