70 THE PUR SEALS OP THE PRIBILOP ISLANDS. 



The fact that the fur seal acts by instinct and not by reason makes it possible 

 for man to use the fur-seal herd to his own advantage, and to treat it much 

 as he would a herd of cattle, with the advantageous exception that he is neither 

 obliged to feed, water, nor look after its welfare. Its instincts, however, sharpened 

 by long years of natural selection, and augmented by the cumulative effects of 

 heredity, in most ways supply the place of reason and are an offset for its natural 

 stupidity. 



Among the strongest of these instincts is the homing instinct, which yearly leads 

 the seals back to the rookeries and directs them to the feeding grounds, and so strong 

 has this instinct become by long cultivation that, as with the great auk, nothing short 

 of extermination will drive the seals from their rookeries.' 



The seals return to the rookery grounds of the Pribilof Islands, not because they 

 have the least idea that they will there find protection, but simply because their 

 homing instinct leads them to do so. They have returned just as regularly and 

 persistently to Robben Island and to their Antarctic breeding grounds, where every 

 seal, big and little, is relentlessly slain. Their "bump of locality" is greater than 

 their reasoning power. Conversely, the female seals, which are never disturbed, are 

 just as much afraid of man as are the bachelors, whose ranks are thinned by annual 

 slaughter. The experience of a score of years has not taught them that so far as man 

 is concerned they are quite safe when on shore. 



Just so this instinct of locality, coupled with gregariousness, brings the seals 

 released from a killing back to the hauling grounds, when a more intelligent or 

 distrustful creature would forsake the place entirely. The same causes, plus the 

 instinctive desire to get somewhere near the rookeries, bring the bachelors to the 

 vicinity of the breeding grounds. Time was when the rookeries were so large and 

 occupied the water front to such an extent that access to the territory at the rear was 

 restricted and vast numbers of seals were forced to haul elsewhere. The earliest maps 

 of the islands show that then, as now, breeding and hauling grounds were contiguous, 

 although then the number of bachelors was so vast that only a small portion of them 

 could approach the frontier of the breeding grounds, and a very close approach is 

 prevented by the picket line of waiting bulls. 



The gregarious nature of the seals is extremely strong, not only leading them to 

 herd together, but, like sheep, to follow one anotber blindly, regardless of where they 

 may be going, seeking safety or hurrying to the killing gang without the slightest 

 hesitancy. One morning on Zoltoi blafls a seal, startled by the approach of a party 

 on the way to the reef, plunged over the edge of the bluff to the rocks, 15 or 20 feet 



' In many ways the case of the fur seal resembles that of the great auk; hoth, when discovered 

 were animals of limited distribution, confined to small, uninhabited islands, and both evinced the 

 utmost tenacity in clinging to their breeding grounds: One might suppose from much that has been 

 written that there was some occult reason why the fur seal was found only on the Pribilof Islands 

 out of all those that skirt the Alaskan coast, and that those islets alone had the necessary conditions 

 of climate to suit the fur seal. As a matter of fact there is nothing mysterious in the matter for the 

 seal, like the great auk, was probably exterminated by prehistoric man in every place that was 

 accessible. 



The fur seal family is one of great adaptability, and its members thrive not only in the cold and 

 wet of high latitudes, but under the burning sun of the Tropics ; climate has little effect, provided the 

 species can breed in peace. But a creature which comes on shore to breed and passes a quarter to a 

 third of its life on land is particularly liable to the attacks of man, and uncivilized man is no more 

 careful to protect breeding animals than his civilized relatives. 



