INVESTIGATION" OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 47 



Tenth. That by the middle of September the rookeries are entirely broken up. 

 Confused, straggling bands of females are seen among the bachelors, pups, and small 

 squads of old males, crossing and recrossing the ground in an aimless, listless manner. 

 The season now is over. 



Eleventh. That many of the seals do not leave these grounds of St. Paul and St. 

 George before the end of December, and some remain even as late as the 12th of 

 January; but that by the end of October and the beginning of November every year 

 all the male seals of mature age — 5 and 6 years and upward — have left the island. 

 The younger males go with the others. Many of the pups still range about the islands, 

 but are not hauled to any great extent on the beaches or the flats. They seem to 

 prefer the rocky shore margin and to lie as high up as they can get on such bluffy 

 rookeries as Tolstoi and the Reef. By the end of this month (November) they are 

 as a rule all gone. 



With this analysis before us to-day, after looking into every harem 

 of the entire circuit of these rookeries, we are able to say that this is 

 the order of their life, and that in living to-day they are following this 

 same system as insistently as if it were never disturbed by that human 

 agency which has brought the vast herd of 1874 to this pitiful rem- 

 nant now surviving. 



In 1874 every 100 feet of sea rookery margin carried on its line at 

 least 10 bulls, and every 100 feet of depth from that margin would 

 show a bull for every 7 feet of that. Before the cows came, before a 

 pup was born, these bulls fought desperately on that margin, and as 

 they progressed backward, for those stations. Then with the first 

 arrival of the breeding females along toward the end of June and the 

 4th of July all this fighting ceased. Every bull seemed then to rec- 

 ognize the fact that from thence on until the end of the season he was 

 the undisputed and unchallenged possessor of his station. The cows 

 came out from the water as they do to-day, not in heat, not noticed 

 or fought for, and they either lay as they landed or passed on over 

 those which had preceded them, rilling up the stations between bull 

 and bull to the outer limits of those breeding bulls that we have just 

 mentioned. During all this progress of arrival, passing into "heat," 

 after the birth of pups, and subsequent impregnation, no fighting 

 whatever took place between these males. 



Each bull seemed to do exactly then as he does to-day; that is, 

 rest upon the point of vantage which he gained before the arrival of 

 the females, unchallenged by his neighbor, though he be 100 feet away 

 or only 6 or 7 feet. He may have 100 cows to-day and be fairly lost 

 in the medley surrounding him, as they often are under our eyes, yet 

 the bull outside of that station perhaps 10, 20, 30, or 40 feet away may 

 not have more than 1 cow, or may have 2 or 3 . That bull never chal- 

 lenges the right of his more fortunate neighbor. He never steals cows. 

 He never crosses from his station to torment or fight with the posses- 

 sor of many cows, even though he has but 1, or none. We have been 

 over this entire circuit ; we have never seen a pair of bulls fighting over 

 the possession of a cow, or in any way struggling to tear one from the 

 other or "trample their pups to death." Not an instance of that kind 

 has occurred in this 10 days' study of that life, during the very height 

 of the season, directly under our eyes. It never occurred in 1872 when, 

 on St. Paul Island, there were 85,000 of these harems and when, on 

 St. George Island, there were 4,000; or, in all, about 90,000 rousing, 

 fighting bulls which, as compared with the small number found to-day, 

 do not differ in the slightest in their behavior, from their coming to 

 their going. 



