REPLY TO ME. BAERETT-HAMILTpN. 173 



therefore preferred to sift out those matters for which he takes me to task and to treat 

 of them in a connected argument. 



I may state right at the outset.that the differences between us do not, as a rule, 

 relate to facts. So far as I can see he admits that I have stated tbem correctly on the 

 whole, and with regard to the facts observed and stated by him I can make a similar 

 admission. I may state further that Mr. Barrett- Hamiltou also, to a great extent, 

 agrees with me in my conclusions. He does not blame the driving of the male seals 

 for the decrease nor the early raiding of the rookeries; he admits that the females 

 and bachelors go long distances to sea to feed during the summer; he thinks I am 

 correct in assigning separate feeding grounds to the Bering Island seals (Jfforth 

 Eookery) and the Copper Island seals; he seems to have no doubt that the pup must 

 starve to death on the rookery when the mother is killed at sea; he even goes to the 

 length of admitting that pelagic sealing is partly responsible for the decrease, while I 

 have maintained that, as a general proposition, the immense injury to the Commander 

 Islands seal herd is caused by pelagic sealing alone. However, by qualifying his 

 admission by asserting his inability to fix the exact portion of the blame to be laid on 

 pelagic sealing as the cause, he leaves a chance for those so disposed to assume that 

 he considers this portion quite insignificant. 



Here, then, is one point in which he professes to disagree with me. The other 

 difference appears to relate to the mortality of the pups on Commander Islands. I 

 shall treat of the two points separately. 



It appears to Mr. Barrett-Hamilton (p. 31) that I have omitted "one of the most 

 important causes, and one which has been thoroughly insisted upon by the British 

 commissioners of 1891 and 1892 as being a most potent cause of the decrease of the 

 seals," viz, "overkilling" of males on land, and he thinks that the opinion of these 

 commissioners and of Mr. Venning "is at least worth quoting." In answer to this I 

 may say, first, that Mr. Venning's report was never published, so far as I know, and 

 that I have only got hold of a copy of it long after my own report was printed. 

 Consequently I could not well quote Mr. Venning's opinion even if I had thought it 

 worth quoting. As to the opinion of the British commisi>roners of 1891, it would have 

 taken more space than was at my command were I to have quoted and refuted all the 

 curious opinions held by them. The irrelevancy of the "overkilling" argument I 

 regarded as so obvious as not to merit special notice, since nobody else, at the time I 

 wrote, seemed to have taken- it up seriously. I dealt with those causes which "have 

 been generally regarded as responsible for the undeniable decline of seal life" (Russian 

 Pur- Seal Islands, p.»134), and it seems to me altogether uncalled for when Mr. Barrett- 

 Hamilton, after this limitation, declares. that "a reader would conclude that no other 

 cause had ever been alleged for the decrease of the seals." 



As Mr. Barrett-Hamilton revives this theory, though now greatly tempered by 

 the admission of overkilling at sea, it may be necessary to go into particulars, since 

 he has based his argument partly upon facts and statistics furnished by myself in my 

 book. But unfortunately he has so misread and misconstrued my statements (as in 

 the above example) that part of my business must first be to set him and the " reader" 

 right on these preliminary points. Mr. Barrett- Hamilton's mistakes are, I fancy, 

 attributable to oversight, due to his anxiety to prove his own theory, as well as to 

 carelessness in reading my book, and particularly in quoting it. The appearance of 

 misrepresentation, however, is undoubtedly unintentional, as I am glad to admit, for 



