EEPLY TO MR. BARRETT- HAMILTON. 179 



staudard during the years immediately preceding 1890 would have to suffer a setback 

 for some years as they had anticipated the catch, but the breeding herd would go on 

 increasing just the same. 



This then was not " overkilling," properly speaking ; it was only " anticipation," 

 and was chiefly the business of the company.^ Pelagic sealing, however, just then 

 commenced on the Asiatic side and made such inroads both in the breeding seals and 

 the bachelors, that the rookeries shrunk visibly and the catches on laud fell off with 

 unexampled rapidity year after year.^ It is therefore neither unjust nor incorrect to 

 lay the blame on the pelagic sealing for the continuous decrease of the bachelor 

 seals on pelagic sealing alone. 



Barrett-Hamilton (p. 35), "without wishing to throw any doubt" upon my 

 statement that the lower figures of the catch for 1876, 1877, and 1883, the "years of 

 rest," as he calls them, were not due to a lack of seals on the rookeries, but to the fact 

 that the company did not desire more on account of the conjunctures on the market, 

 nevertheless calls attention 1:o the coincidence of certain remarks by Bryan and 

 Mclntyre, and lays stress upon the fact that the administration of the affairs of the 

 lessees both on the Pribilofs and the Commander Islands was in the same hands. 

 This very fact ought to have convinced him that it was the status of the market which 

 actuated the company, as, otherwise, if they had wanted " years of rest," they would 

 undoubtedly have had them alternate on the two groups of islands. Barrett-Hamilton 

 has not only overlooked that I was on the islands in 1883 and consequently know from* 

 personal experience whereof I spoke when I asserted that the lower catch was not 

 due to a decrease of the killable seals, but he has also lost sight of the fact that the 

 smaller catch was publicly announced to the market the year previous. But the 

 whole argument from these so-called "years of rest" falls entirely to the ground 

 when we remember that Barrett-Hamilton restricts (in his mind) the increase of the 

 Commander Island rookeries to the years 1870 to 1880 (p. 34), for, accordingly, it was 

 necessary to give two " years of rest" during this period of increase, and only one 

 "year of rest" during 1881 to 1890, the "period during which there was practically 

 no increase of the seals (p. 34)." This surmise of Barrett-Hamilton's of an increase 

 only from 1870 to 1880 and a stationary condition between 1881 and 1890 is entirely 

 devoid of any basis in fact and is contradictory to all the evidence at hand, for my 

 observations were made during this alleged second period, and at that time the seals, 

 as a whole, were certainly increasing. 



Over-JcilUng on Copper Island ? — ^After having himself described the character of 

 the rookeries on Copper Island and the impossibility of catching as large a proportion 

 of the bachelors hauling out as on Bering Island; and after having himself used this 

 as an argument for the superabundance of bulls on the Copper Island rookeries,' 

 Barrett-Hamilton thinks, nevertheless, that " over-killing " must have had something 



} Whether such an arrangement was unprofitable or the reverse would naturally depend on the 

 conditions of the fur market. If the prices were particularly high, it might be profitable to 

 "anticipate," especially since the resultant decrease later on would tend to send the prices still higher. 



° It is quite possible, moreover, that the drop in the catch of 1891 would not have been so large, if 

 it had not just happened that the business was that year transferred to a new company. 



" "I can orply attribute the number of old bulls to the difficulty here in obtaining every seal and 

 scraping the rookeries clean" (p. 29). It would seem more natural to attribute the superabundance of 

 bulls to the excessive decrease of the females, which can only be due to pelagic sealing. 



