EFFECTS OF CONTACT WITH MAN. 141 
RELATIONS OF MAN HAVE NOT AFFECTED SEALS. 
In short, our experience leads us to believe that not only has contact with man 
produced no injurious effect on the herd, but, on the contrary, more intimate and 
constant contact under intelligent direction would tend to render the seals more 
tractable, and certainly open the way to the improvement of their condition. It will 
never be possible to house and feed the fur seals, but their breeding grounds can be 
drained of the filth which now breeds death to the young. These breeding grounds 
can be extended and improved. An exact enumeration of their number can be made. 
The males to serve the breeding grounds can be selected and more ‘closely limited, 
thus obviating loss of revenue on the one hand and injury to the herd on the other. 
In other words, much if not all that can be done with other animals is possible with 
the fur seal. : 
To sum up this matter of the relations of man to the animals on the islands: We 
find that the killing of males as carried on, at least since the islands were transferred 
to the United States, has not been so great as to endanger the breeding stock; that 
the methods of handling the seals on the drives and killing grounds has not been 
such as to permanently injure those surviving them. In a word, the interference and 
operations of man have in no way contributed to alteration of the life habits of the 
fur seal and are in no way responsible for its decline and threatened extermination. 
