92 THE ASIATIC FUR-SEAL ISLANDS. 



DO ALL BACHELORS HAUL OUT? 



The general impression, as derived both from the printed reports and oral 

 communications, seems to be that tlie vast majority, if not all, of the bachelors haul 

 out on the beaches during the season. Tt would, of course, be impossible to say whether 

 each individual bachelor does haul out at least once during the season, or whether 

 some of them stay in the water throughout the entire year, but my observations lead 

 me to believe that only a smaller portion of the whole body of bachelors haul out at 

 amy one time. That a good many of the seals in the water in the immediate neighbor- 

 hood of the rookeries are bachelors, I know from personal observation, for the two 

 sexes are more easily distinguished at a distance while in the water than on the rocks. 

 These probably all haul out at some time or another. But the question is,, does the 

 bulk of the bachelors met with on the feeding-grounds and far away from the 

 rookeries during tlie breeding season also haul out? I am inclined to believe that 

 they do not, for the following reason: 



While it is true that the great rookery on Bering Island was never before "raked 

 and scraped" for the last bachelor seal as it has been during the past seasons, yet it is 

 not denied that a similar difficulty in gathering the requisite number of killables has 

 been going on for a couple of years, though not to the same extent. Now, if intelligent 

 and honest persons, at the close of the season of 1894, had been asked, while viewing 

 that rookery, whether there were, say, 18,000 bachelor seals (outside the pups of that 

 year) in sight or within a comparatively short distance, they would be obliged to answer 

 no. The question thefn becomes pertinent : Whence, then, came the 9,000 bachelors 

 killed in 1895 on that rookery (hardly any yearlings showed up at all) and the probable 

 other 9,000 that perished during the winter by being killed by the pelagic sealers or 

 otherwise? The bulk of these 18,000 must have stayed away from the immediate 

 neighborhood of the island, and as bachelor seals are not known to haul out in great 

 bodies very far from the breeding grounds, there is every reason to conclude that they 

 stayed at sea. 



Mutatis mutandis, the same question might have been asked in 1896. There were 

 not enough bachelors left in 1895 near the rookery to furnish 500 additional skins. 

 Whence, then, came the 6,000 bachelors, and good sized ones at that, killed at the 

 north rooitery in 1896? 



It might be said that, as the bachelors which have hauled out do not stay ashore 

 during the entire season, but go off to sea and return time and again, the whole reserve 

 supply of bachelors may have been in the water in the neighborhood. But that 

 explanation does not hold so far as the Commander Islands, at least, are concerned, for 

 two reasons: First, because the natives were on the watch all the time for the appear- 

 ance of even the smallest band of bachelors. Toward the end of the season no drive 

 was despised, however small, and few indeed were the bachelors which they suffered 

 to escape back into the sea; second, because there would be a larger proportion of 

 bachelors in the pelagic catch on the feeding grounds, the small percentage suggesting 

 pretty plainly that the nouhauling bachelors remain away from the neighborhood of 

 the islands. 



To fully understand the question it is necessary to remember that the bachelor 

 seals, especially the younger classes, have no functions to perform on land during the 

 breeding season. I do not believe that a single good reason can be advanced in 

 defense of a proposition that the hauling out of the bachelor is of any advantage to 



