REPLY TO MB. BARRETT-HAMILTON. 177 



It must be understood that the number of bulls on Bering Mand, even in the 

 days of plenty, never ran up into the thousands. They were only to be counted by 

 hundreds. It is consequently plain that only a limited number of new bulls were 

 required to counteract the annual falling off of superannuated or dead bulls, as well as 

 the increased demand for more males due to the steady increase of the breeding females. 

 It must also be understood that even in the worst years, meaning those iu which the 

 bachelors were most relentlessly pursued and killed, that even in these years there is 

 a period in each during which no bachelors are taken, viz, when the skins are stagey. 

 Very often, though not every year, a drive or two is made in October when the stagey 

 season is over, but the very possibility of taking several hundred skins then is most 

 conclusive evidence that, in spite of all scraping, there are more bachelors left. The 

 very fact that large numbers of 4 and 5 year-olds appear next year, though the rookery 

 was apparently cleaned of 3 and 4 year-olds shows that it is not possible to get all the 

 seals which are near the rookery and probably hauling out at one time or another. 

 It would be an impossibility to kill so close and so continually that not enough males 

 would escape to fill the few gaps in the ranks of the buUs. 



This conclusion is then reached, even under Barrett-Hamilton's supposition, that 

 all the bachelors existent betake themselves to the rookeries and haul out. For the 

 sake of disproving overkilling as a cause of lack of bulls it is therefore not necessary 

 to take refuge in the theory that large bodies of male seals stay at sea from the 

 rookeries. This side of the question I shall discuss more fully hereafter, and I wish 

 only to call attention to the matter in this connection, because if we accept that 

 explanation the overkillihg theory becomes still more inadmissible and impossible. 



The practical absence of yearlings on North Boolcery, 1893. — Barrett-Hamilton in 

 laying such stress upon the fact reported by me that in 1895 the yearlings were 

 practically absent from Bering Island E"orth Eookery seems only to have found one 

 way in which to explain their nonappearance, viz, their nonexistence, and according 

 to him this nonexistence can only be due to one of two causes — either to their not hav- 

 ing come into existence at alj in 1894, or to their having become exterminated. As 

 he rightly considers sealing on the Bering Islavd. feeding grounds In 1894 to have been 

 too limited (he seems to think— erroneously— that it did not exist at all) to cause the 

 starvation of practically all the pups in 1894, he falls back upon the only other alter- 

 native, and conjectures that they were not born at all. Upon this postulate he builds 

 further and postulates that they were not born because their mothers had not become 

 fertilized in 1893, and this lack of fertilization, it is further postulated, is due to "over- 

 killing" of males at some earlier period. He thus draws the imaginary conclusions 

 backward apparently logically enough, but does he draw them forward as well 1 Does 

 he also draw the necessary consequences? If in 1895 there did not exist any yearlings 

 to speak of, there could be no 2-year-olds in 1896. In my report upon my visit to the 

 islands in 1896 (ante p. 159) I have given the weights of the skins, however, and it is 

 from the figures there submitted perfectly clear that there was no relative deficiency 

 of the class in question. In 1897, according to Barrett-Hamilton's theory, there ought 

 to be an almost absolute absence of 3-year-olds, but although the figures of the weights 

 have not been forthcoming yet, it can be stated with certainty that there was no such 

 absence. 



15183— PT 4 12 



