DIFFICULTY IN DISTINGUISHING FEMALES PROM BACHELORS. 89 



between the breeding females. Mixed in among the latter in this way, it is next to 

 impossible at long range to say, with any approach to accuracy, what the proportion 

 between these two classes is.' In general, the difficulty lies in the fact that the 

 individual harems differ so greatly in size. Thus, during the visit to Kishotchnaya 

 rookery, Bering Island, on July 9, Mr. Grebnitski counted several harems which 

 contained all the way from 12 to 93 females, or more. But there is still another 

 serious difficulty, which is due to the constant going and coming of the females, so that 

 the number of females in the individual harem fluctuates between and the maximum, 

 according to the time of day or condition of weather. Thus, on the 16th of July, on 

 the same rookery, I counted a harem having 16 females, which upon a recount a few 

 hours later, contained 23, " while some of the other bulls were entirely deserted."^ 



I have above alluded to the difficulty of discriminating at a great distance 

 between the females and the killable bachelors when mixed on the breeding ground. 

 The difficulty is not confined to these two classes alone. The experts profess to be 

 able to separate the bachelors into yearlings, 2-year-old8, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and 

 5-year-olds, and in the descriptions and discussions we find these classes mentioned 

 in such a way as to lead to the impression that they are easily recognized on the 

 rookery or the killing ground, but nothing can be further from the facts. With 

 hundreds of dead seals before me, I have been unable to draw any line between the 

 various ages, nor has anybody present been able to point them out to me. 



I have submitted elsewhere in this report a series of weights of skins (p. 109) 

 which shows beyond a question that there is an unbroken series of all sizes from the 

 smallest to the largest. The whole question resolves itself into a mental sorting 

 of the killable seals into a number of classes, calling the smallest 2-ycar-olds, the 

 largest 5-yearsolds, and roughly distributing those in between among their 

 respective classes. The yearlings, however, form a fairly well-marked class by 

 themselves, as do, of course, the bulls — features not apparent in the tables of skin 

 weights alluded to, from the fact that these classes are not killed. 



The fact that even the natives are not always able to tell the females from the 

 bachelors on the rookeries was curiously proven to me one day at Glinka, Copper 

 Island, when Aleksander Zaikof and the chief, Sergei Sushkof, had a somewhat 

 heated controversy over the question whether a certain body of seals on the Urili 

 Kamen. rookery consisted of bachelors or females. Both of the men are among the 

 most experienced and intelligent on the island. Yet it was only because Sushkof 

 had been stationed the whole season at Glinka, while Zaikof only arrived with us 

 the day previous, that he was regarded to be in the right. 



1 It is held by some that the natives have such a marvelously keen eye and discriminating power 

 as to enable them, at least, to make such an estimate. At one time I accepted this as a matter of faith, 

 but my experience last summer— to be detailed further on— has convinced me that the natives are not 

 particularly gifted in that respect. As a matter of fact, their estimates are about as much guesswork 

 as that of the white people, only that from their greater familiarity with thei ground and the seals, 

 they are apt to guess more closely. 



2 The number of animals and the proportion of the sexes on North rookery, Bering Island, 

 during July, 1893, as quoted by Dr. Slunin (Promysl. Bog. Kam. Sakh. Komand., p. 9), from the official 

 journal of the overseer (offitsialni dnevnik nadziratelia) are worse than useless. The numeration by the 

 overseer in question is the worst kind of guesswork, if not entirely fictitious. Dr. Slunin's remark 

 that the conclusions to be made from those figures would be strange istranni) is certainly appropriate. 



