306 
BULiiETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHEBIES 
and America at their meeting in Washington in the fall of 1897. Td stop the land 
killing of males even for a single season, or to limit the number killed without 
stopping pelagic sealing, would have been not only useless but absolutely sense- 
less, as the only possible result would have been the sparing of that many males 
for the benefit and encouragement of the pelagic sealers. Owing to the delay 
in acting upon the recommendations of the experts who investigated conditions on 
the islands, the seals went to their destruction, which was terribly accelerated by 
the circumstances detailed above. 
The Russian authorities on the islands must have seen the approaching catas- 
trophe, but their optimism apparently was not seriously shaken, since it was 
possible to average nearly 9,400 skins during the years preceding the debacle of 
the war. It then became plain not only that the breeding herd had greatly 
decreased but that the number of breeding males in particular was becoming alarm- 
ingly small. In 1904 the natives at the North Rookery on Bering Island reported 
to the administrator of the islands that only 25 old bulls were left and that 
bachelors were exceedingly scarce. To counteract this disproportion of the sexes, 
afitd also to make up for the loss of the bachelor skins, the company proposed 
that they should be allowed to stop killing bachelors and to kill females instead. 
This was objected to, but by a revival of the old fiction of virgin and superannuated 
cows the company succeeded in obtaining from the Ministry of Agriculture and 
Public Domain in St. Petersburg permission to kill 8,000 unimpregnated cows and 
1,000 bachelors. As the permission arrived after the opening of the season, 1,608 
bachelors but only 6,383 females were killed that year (1905). 
Thus began a new chapter in the destruction of this herd, since, as was to be 
foreseen, this unique method of restoring the equilibrium between the sexes, far 
from accomplishing its purpose only hastened the destruction. During the next 
two years comparatively few females were recorded killed in the official documents, 
but their skins were taken unofficially and without permission, the understanding 
being that only nonpregnant or superannuated cows were to be killed. 
At this juncture occurred the death of Nikolai Aleksandrovitch Grebnitski 
(fig. 13), who had been the Government manager of the islands for 30 years. When 
he first landed on Bering Island on August 21, 1877, the sealing industiy was still 
on the upward grade, reaching its zenith during the following 10 j'^ears. He was a 
capable administrator, who was looking out for the interests of the natives in their 
relations with the leasing companies, and he established sensible and suitable rules 
for the regulation of the seafing business and blue-fox and sea-otter hunting. 
Grebnitski, who had studied at the University of Odessa and in Germany, had 
considerable biological training and was thus well qualified for his position. It 
may be safely said that in the days before the beginning of pelagic sealing Greb- 
nitski knew all that could be learned about the seals on land and acted intelli- 
gently upon his knowledge. Moreover, he was practically the only man in the 
whole Russian Government who knew anything about the seals and the sealing 
business; but, of course, when pelagic sealing started in earnest on the Asiatic 
coast he was practically helpless and can hardly be blamed for the Russian 
failure to secure any practical protection for the Commander Islands seal herd. 
