ALLEGED CHANGES OF HABITS. 109 



The explanations offered of these alleged, but utterly un proven, changes of 

 habits are diametrically opposed to each other. Those postulating that the regulated 

 driving and killing of Ihe bachelor seals on shore is causing the decrease of seals on 

 the islands, explain that this interference with the seals has led tbem to seek other 

 haunts— in this case the coast of Kamchatka. There was never any evidence that 

 seals were driven away from any place frequented by them habitually and took up 

 their abode habitually in some other place. Elliott (Monogr. Pribyl., 1882, p. 109, 

 footnote), it is true, in speaking of the "rapacious hunters" that were drawn to the 

 Commander Islands, states as follows : 



They appear, as near as I can arrive at truths, from the scanty record, * " * to have 

 killed many and harassed the other fur seals entirely away from the island ; so that there was an 

 interregnum between 1760 and 1786, during which time the Russian promyshleuiks took no fur seals, 

 and were utterly at loss to know whither these creatures had fled from the islands of Bering and 

 Copper. When they (the seals) began to revisit their haunts on the Commander Islands, I can find no 

 specific date. » » * j think, therefore, that when the fur seals on the Commander Islands became 

 so ruthlessly hunted and harassed, shortly after Steller's observations in 1742, then they soon repaired, 

 or rather most of the survivors did, to the shelter and isolation of the Pribilof group, which was 

 wholly unknown to man. 



As will be shown in the historical part of this report (p. 114), the seals, as a matter 

 of fact, never fled from the islands of Bering and Copper, and Elliott's statement 

 rests on a misapijrehension. In the very year 1786, when Pribilof first discovered the 

 islands which now bear his name, there returned to Kamchatka two vessels loaded 

 with fur-seal skins which could only have been taken on the Commander Islands, vizj 

 one belonging to Protassof, "the cargo consisting chiefly of fur seals," and one 

 belonging to Shelikof, with no less than 18,000 seal skins. Pribilof, with his cargo 

 of over 31,000 seals from the new islands, did not return until several years later. 



Tne other explanation offered by some of those who ascribe the decrease of the 

 seals on the rookeries to the interference by the sealing at sea rests on an assumption 

 that the sealers, by stationing themselves at intervals across the path of the seals on 

 their northward migration, actually cut the seals off from the islands, thus forcing them 

 to go elsewhere, or, in the case of those finally reaching the islands, materially delay- 

 ing them on the way. It would seem that to anyone who has seen the way in which 

 seals travel during their migrations it would be plain that it would be impossible for 

 hiany times the number of sealing schooners now in existence to effectually block the 

 progress of the migrating herds. It may well be that the positions of the schooners 

 if plotted on the charts would show them to thus stretch across the path of the seals 

 (it has been so asserted in Eussian reports), and the large marks on the chart may 

 well convey such an impression, but at sea the thing is quite different.' 



This last explanation hints at the other alleged change in the habits of the seal, 

 viz, an increasing lateness in the arrival of the bulk of the seals and a corresponding 

 lateness in many of the phenomena of seal life on the islands. It is utterly incon- 

 ceivable, however, that the sealers can even delay the bulk of the migrating herds 



' For the contemplation of those who believe in the schooners being able to cordon the sea so as 

 to actually intercept the seals, I submit the following: In the latter part of July, 1892, to the end of 

 August, numerous schooners killed seals south of Copper Island. If the position of the daily catches 

 of eight of them be plotted down on a chart, it will be seen that they covered pretty evenly an area 

 of 13,000 square nautical miles (roughly speaking). As their combined catcli amounted to about 4,000 

 skins, it is plain that they secured about one seal on every 3 square miles (see map, pi. 1). 



