88 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOP ISLANDS. 



Falling from cliffs may seem a rather singular source of death to anyone not 

 familiar with the conditions about the rookeries and with the habits of the pups, 

 although to one acquainted with them it is not surprising. Young seals are much like 

 children; they delight in exploring little caves and creeping into out-of-the-way nooks 

 and crannies, a trait which leads to some of the losses from drowning. They also 

 scramble along narrow ledges on the bluff's back of the rooEery grounds, especially if 

 there be some miniature cave in which they can curl up and sleep, and in these explor 

 rations it occasionally happens that even their clinging, rubbery feet slip and a pup falls 

 from 10 to 40 feet onto the sharp rocks below. In fact it was the sight of the little seals 

 thus scrambling about the bluffs of North Rookery, St, George, that first suggested 

 the thought that some might be killed in this manner, and a little later two bodies were 

 seen lying among the rocks in places inaccessible from below. The result of such a 

 fail was ^hown by the autopsy of the only one thus killed which could be recovered, 

 the others having fallen among the breeding seals, where their bodies could not be 

 reached. Even when they do not fall far enough to be killed, pups may fall into crev- 

 ices among the rocks whence escape is impossible, and in these natural death traps 

 perish miserably from starvation. Such a trap, consisting of a narrow crevice at the 

 base of a long, steeply sloping rock, was noted on Kitovi when counting dead pups in 

 1897. The bodies of several little seals were taken from this one cranny, whose steep 

 sides prevented escape, while the sloping rock above formed a most admirable chute 

 down which the pups slid to their death. A still more curious case was that of a young 

 seal found penned beneath a rock by drifting sand, this having accumulated to such 

 an extent that escape was impossible, and only room enough was left to enable the pup 

 to breathe, the aperture being quite too small to allow the body to pass. 



The number of pups tlius caught among rocks and starved, while not large, 

 is yet greater than one would have suspected, since 7 pups and 1 cow were rescued 

 when counting the starved pups, and, of course, any cause of death, however small, 

 helps swell the total mortality. Now and then rocks fall on the pups instead of pups 

 falling on the rocks, and at Polovina two young seals were seen lying beneath blocks 

 of stone which had dropped from the face of the cliff". It is rather surprising that this 

 does not occur more frequently; but while the rocks are ciacked and shattered, rock- 

 falls rarely occur except in early spring before the seals have arrived. Deaths from 

 this source are probably more frequent on Copper Island than on the Pribilofs, owing 

 to the fact that the rookeries in many cases lie at the base of overhanging cliff's, and, 

 although accurate observations of the rookeries are difficult from the manner in which 

 they are guarded, Mr. Barrett-Hamilton noticed in one spot a bull and two cows 

 crushed beneath fallen rocks. 



The following note is taken from Dr. Stejneger's report on the Russian Seal Islands, 

 published in 1896. He says, page 45, footnote: 



So steep are the rocky walls behind the Copper Island rookeries, and so close do the seals lie to 

 them, that falling masses of earth and rocks have occasionally caused the death of many of the animals. 

 Thus it is recorded (Otchet. Ross Amer. M. Konip. Za., 1849, p. 23) that on the 16th of October 1849 

 during an earthquake, a rocky wall fell down, burying a rookery on Copper Island. Another earth 

 slide on one of the Glinka rookeries in 1893 similarly resulted in the killing of many seals. 



The death of a pup seen on the hillside at Upper Zapadni, jammed beneath a 

 bowlder, was in all probability due primarily to some rampant bull or fleeing bachelor, 

 for even on level ground a hurrying seal will overturn a good-sized stone, while on a 



