256 INVESTIGATION OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



It is and was easy to account for the heavy shrinkage of life on the rookeries, for the 

 pelagic sealer has been hard at work on the female life since 1885-86; he has killed 

 m the water 75 to 80 females to every 20 males, and this proportion in killing ought to 

 be shown on the breeding grounds. It was. 



But what about that infinitely greater loss among the young males on the hauling 

 grounds? If the pelagic sealer was all to blame (as Jordan says he is) for this ruin of 

 the herd, why should this class of seals of which he kills the fewest be the one class 

 most fearfully decimated. 



I began on the ground in 1890 to review every season's work on the islands since 

 1874. I found that in 1883 the supply of surplus male seals had so dwindled on the 

 islands that the driving was then extended to all of the hauling fields; that extension 

 declared increased difficulty in getting the supply long before the pelagic sealer had 

 entered Bering Sea or had really begun destructive work in the North Pacific Ocean. 



If the pelagic sealer had not caused this trouble on the islands in 1883-1887, of get- 

 ting the full supply of killable young male seals, what had? An epidemic or disease? 

 No, not a trace of it. Then there remained but two reasonable answers; either too 

 many seals were annually killed by the lessees, or the method of driving to cull the 

 herds so driven was at fault. 



The effect of killing annually 100,000 young male seals of a single high grade upon 

 the whole herd as begun in 1870 was an experiment. It went far beyond the Russian 

 limit and method, for it added a much greater danger. It called for the systematic 

 culling out of all the seals driven under 3 years of age and over 4 years. 



This act of steadily killing every fine 3-year-old and 4-year-old male that comes 

 up annually in the drives began in a few years to create a serious interference with that 

 law of natural selection in the life of the herd which enables the fur seal to be so 

 dominant a pinniped. This interference is at once seen by a thoughtful naturalist 

 when the continued culling out of the very finest young male seals from the herd 

 takes place annually. How long would any stock breeder keep up the standard of 

 his herd in this State if he annually slaughtered all of the very finest young males 

 that were bom into it or brought into it? 



Yet Dr. Jordan comes forward in his final report with this plain confession of his 

 inability to grasp a well-established truth in regard to the life of wild animals. Listen 

 to him (Chap. IX, p. 128): 



"The whole matter (theory of overdriving) is too absurd for serious consideration, 

 and might be passed by with the silent contempt which it deserves were it not for 

 the fact that it was accepted by the British commissioners in 1891 and made the 

 chief foundation of the British contention before the Paris tribunal of arbitration." 



Yet, curiously enough. Dr. Jordan, on page 120, immediately preceding this dog- 

 matic deduction, cuts all the ground out from under his own feet in the following 

 statement: 



' ' But suppose the killing was continued through a series of years, every 3-year-old 

 being killed, the reserve would hi time be cut off and the stock of breeding bulls 

 die out. It is impossible to say how long it would take to produce this effect, because 

 we do not know the length of the life of a bull. We may infer, however, that it is 

 not less than 15 years, and therefore the injurious effects of this excessive killing, 

 begun in any given year and continued indefinitely, would not be seen within 10 

 years at least." 



This he publishes under the caption of "A hypothetical case." 



It is not hypothetical. It is the real story of the driving and killing on the islands 

 from 1880 up to 1890. During all those years I know, from the records of the work 

 and the direct personal testimony of the men who did the work, that they never allowed 

 a 3-year-old seal to escape that they could get. That in 1883 they first began to 

 fall behind in their run of 3-year-old seals from the hunting grounds of 1872-1874, 

 which had so abundantly supplied them. Then they began to extend their driving 

 to the hitherto untouched hauling grounds of the islands, until by 1896 they were 

 driving from every nook and corner on the islands where a young male seal hauled 

 out, and by 1889, in spite of the frantic exertions that they made, they got less than 

 one-quarter of their quota of 3-year-old skins. They had to make it up in yearlings 

 and "short" 2-year-olds for that year. 



In the face of this positive truth about the woik of 1889, which appears in my 

 report of 1890. Dr. Jordan, in 1898, makes the following strange blunder of statement: 

 "To destroy this class (3-year-olds) or any considerable number of them would at once 

 weaken the herd. But there would be no object in such killing, and it has never 

 been thought of" (p. 120). 



Never been thought of. Why , it was the sole aim and thought of the land butchers 

 to get every fine 3-year-old and 4-year-old seal that could be secured in the seal 

 drives from 1872 to 1890 When the supply of this grade dwindled on the original 



