ALASKA. 87 



From this subject of tbe manuer lu which the sealing-husi- 

 ness is conducted on the islands and elsewhere, we naturally 

 turn to the — 



IV . PRESENT CONDITION OP THE SEAL-LIFE AND ITS VALUE. 



A question frequently asked in regard to these islands is 

 this : "At the present rate of killing the seals, it will not be long 

 before they are exterminated ; hov7 much longer will they 

 last?" The answer is, that as long as matters are conducted 

 on the Seal Islands as they now are, one hundred thousand 

 male seals, under the age of five years and over one, may be 

 safely taken every year without the slightest injury to the regu- 

 lar birth-rate or natural increase, provided the animals are not 

 visited by any plague or pestilence, or any such abnormal cause 

 for their destruction, beyond the control of man, and to which, 

 like any other great body of animal life, they must ever be sub- 

 ject. 



Prom my calculations already given it will be seen that a 

 million "pups," or young seals, are born upon these islands every 

 year. Of this million, one-half are males. These 500,000 young 

 males leave the islands for sea, when they are between five and 

 six months old, very fat and hearty, having suifered but a tri- 

 fling loss in number (about 1 per cent.) while on and about the 

 islands, about which there are no enemies whatever; but after 

 they get well down into the Pacific in quest of food, they form 

 the most helpless of their kind to resist or elude sharks, 

 killers, &c., and they are so diminished in number by these 

 natural enemies, that when they return to the Prybilov Islands 

 in the following year, July, they will not present more than one- 

 half of the number with which they left the ground of 

 their birth the previous season ; that is, 250,000. By this time 

 these survivors of last year's birtii have become strong, active 

 swimmers, and when they leave again, as before, in the fall, 

 they are as able as any others of their older classes to take 

 care of themselves, and at least 225,000 of them safely return 

 in the second season after birth, and are very slightly diminished 

 after that during their natural lives of filteen to twenty years 

 each ; and the same will hold good with the females. 



Now, the number of balls required for the annual stock of 

 225,000 virgin cows, to be saved for this service every year, is by 

 their law and habit only one-fifteenth of the number of coics, as 

 on all the breeding-grounds one male will have on an average 



