REPLY TO MR. BARRETT-HAMILTON. 175 



His furtlier stricture is of a similar nature. To anybody who has read my book 



carefully it must be plaiu that when speaking of the decrease of the seal herd I haye 



referred chiefly to the females, 1 was sent out to flud out whether the breeding stock 



had been depleted, and to ascertain, if possible, the cause; that the bachelors had 



become scarce had been proven by the low figures of the laud catch. I needed not 



to go to far-away Bering Island to report upon that in particular. The decrease of 



the cows was the only serious injury to the herd. It is also plain that when I said, iu 



the general summary, alluding both to Bering and Copper islands (p. 135), that "J 



have been unable to resist the force of the logic which places the blame for the decrease of 



the Commander Islands^ seals upon pelagic sealing and upon pelagic sealing alone" the 



remark criticised by Barrett Hamilton (p. 14), I did not specify the Bering Island 



bachelors, much less a single class or age. I did not even allude to the scarcity of 



the yearlings iu the summary (p. 134), nor did I anywhere make it a point, nor try to 



explain it. 1 only reported the fact in its proper place. Yet Barrett-Hamilton goes 



on to say " It is difficult to understand how pelagic sealing is to be made accountable 



for the fact that of 29,112 seals driven to the sealing ground only 540 were yearlings;" 



and again, after having summarized my remarks " by stating that the whole rookery 



had decreased, but that the decrease manifested itself chiefly in the males, and 



especially in the younger males," he says "Now to lay the blame for the above 



peculiar condition of the rookery to the doors of pelagic sealing alone is illogical." 



In the first place, as a matter of fact, I have not laid the blame for this condition on 



lielagic sealing, much less on pelagic sealing alone. I was careful not to commit myself 



to any definite theory as to the scarcity of the males on Bering Island, a point to be 



gone more fully into where I shall be discussing Barrett-Hamilton's theory on this 



point, and consequently I did not lay the blame on pelagic sealing alone. But it does 



not seem to be so " very difficult to understand" how pelagic sealing could be made 



accountable for the practical absence of yearlings if we accept Barrett- Hamilton's idea. 



that they did not exist. I wish to emphasize in the mostpositive manner that what Ihave 



shown was that the yearlings did not appear in any consequential number that year 



on Bering Island rookery, not that they had no existence at all! Now, what 



Barrett-Hamilton has such difficulty in understanding is this : Because the yearlings 



did not exist in 1895 they were either not born in 1894 or else they died that year after 



birth, and "whatever the cause of this may have been, pelagic sealing, at any rate, 



could have had nothing to do with it on the North Rookery, for we have Dr. Stejneger's 



own statement that the feeding ground of this rookery had not been seriously tapped 



by pelagic sealing up to 1895." Sounds good! But suppose, for an instant, that the 



damage which undeniably had happened to the Bering Island female seals was visited 



in 1894 on the pregnant females of that rookery off the coast of Japan during their 



migration north! Suppose that the pelagic sealers in that year of unprecedented 



slaughter, 1894, had fallen in with the herd of Bering Island cows particularly, would 



it be such a tremendous straining of the intellect to understand how pelagic sealing 



could be made accountable for "an unusually small birth rate in 1894?" The year 



1893 was also terrible to the migrating pregnant female seals off Japan. Is it 



so difficult to understand how pelagic sealing could be made accountable under 



Barrett-Hamilton's supposition for the decrease of "especially the younger males" 



outside the yearling class of 1895? 



