FLESH-EATING MAMMALS. 83 



hunting range— at all events, for the first stage of the liunting season— is not 

 much more than 800 miles long, extending from Sendai Bay to Nemuro, the 

 most easterly point of Yezo Island. On reaching Nemuro the seals suddenly 

 disappear about the end of June, and no sealing craft as yet has followed 

 them up, keeping them in sight, between this point and the rookeries on 

 Behring and Copper Islands, or the still smaller rookery of Robben Island in 

 the Okhotsk Sea. The explanation of this sudden acceleration of the seal's 

 pace may be, as the hunters think, merely the quickening of the natural 

 instincts, on the eve of the breeding-time. But it may also be due to a 

 falling oflf in the food supply along the line of the Kurile archipelago. The 

 fact, however, is undoubted that, beyond Nemuro, the schooners lose sight 

 of the seals about the end of June, and this check of their pursuit serves as 

 a mark to divide the hunting season into two distinct stages. 



"The schooners, as a rule, leave Victoria or San Francisco at the end of 

 December or early in January, and, after a two months' voyage across the 

 Pacific, strike the Japanese coast about the latitude of Yokohama, where 

 some of them put in to victual and refit. They begin hunting about the 

 middle or end of March, first meeting large clusters of seals in about latitude 

 S8 deg. N. off Sendai Bay, from about 30 to 250 miles off the shore. The 

 seals are then proceeding northwards at a leisurely pace, travelling during 

 tlie night and feeding and sleeping in the daytime, especially in bright, 

 simshiny weather. ' Sleepers,' as the hunters call them, arc the easiest to 

 shoot ; ' travellers ' are more ditHcult. A schooner with six or seven boats 

 can take, on the average, close on 1,000 skins in the four months, 

 March to June. That closes the first stage of the season, and they then 

 either tranship their catches at sea into a collecting shiyj from Victoria and 

 San Francisco, or else put into Hakodate and prepare their skins for shipment 

 to London or America. This done, after a short stay and revictualling in 

 port, they start northwards for the second stage of the hunting on the western 

 side of Behring Sea and in the Okhotsk Sea. This part of the hunting 

 season, lasting from the end of July till the end of October, yields a veiy 

 much smaller catch than the first stage, and, with a protective zone established 

 round the rookeries, the sealers will probably find it hardly worth while to 

 continue it. At the rate at which the pelagic sealing schooners are increasing, 

 and in the absence of more eilective measures for the protection of the herd 

 on the rookeries, no less than at sea, the industry cannot last long. The 

 Canadian sealing fleet engaged in hunting on the western side of the Pacific 

 has increased even more rapidly than on the American side. In 1891 only 

 one schooner, in 1892 11 or 12, and in 1893 at least 30 hunted in Asiatic 

 waters. In the first place, the advantage, as compared witli the American 

 side, of the shorter range and greater concentration of the licrd, is now well 

 known to the sealers. Secondly, the close season, and the limits prescribed 

 by the award of the Behring Sea arbitrators, are sure to drive many to the 

 western side. And, lastly, the fact that there is a considerable saving in 

 freight and charges when the skins are packed in Japan and shipped xia the 

 Suez Canal to London, as compared with the charges and freight from the 

 American side, will tell in the same direction." 



Of the Alaskan seal-herd, Mr. H. W. Elliott writes, that " the fighting 

 between the old males for the cows is mostly — or, rather, entirely — done 

 with the mouth. The opponents seize one another with their teeth, and 

 then, clenching their jaws, nothing but the sheer strength of the one, and 

 the other tugging to escape, can shake them loose, and that effort invariably 



