THE RUSSIAN EUR-SEAL ISLANDS. 
65 
tlie number of females in tbe individual liarem fluctuates between 0 and the maximum, 
according to the time of day or condition of weather. Thus, on the Iflth of July, on 
the same rookery, I counted a harem having 10 females, which, upon a recount a few 
hours later, contained 23, while some of the other bulls were entirely deserted.”' 
I have above alluded to tlie difficulty of discriminating at a great distance 
between the females and the killable bachelors when mixed on the breeding-ground. 
The difficulty is not confined to these two classes alone. The experts profess to be 
able to separate the bachelors into yearlings, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and 
.3-year-olds, and in the descriptions and discussions we find these classes mentioned 
in such a way as to lead to the impression that they are easily recognized on the 
rookery or the killing-ground, but nothing can be further from the facts. With 
hundreds of dead seals before me, T have been unable to draw any line between the 
various ages, nor has anybody present been able to x>oint them out to me. 
1 have submitted elsewhere in this report a series of weights of skins (p. 100) 
which shows beyond a question that there is an unbroken series of all sizes from the 
smallest to the largest. The whole question resolves itself into a mental sorting 
of the killable seals into a number of classes, calling the smallest two-yeai'-olds, the 
largest five-year-olds, and roughly distributing those in between among their respec- 
tive classes. The yearlings, however, form a fairly well-marked class by themselves, 
as do, of course, the bulls — features not apparent in the tables of skin weights alluded 
to, from the fact that these classes are not killed. 
■ The fact that even the natives are not always able to tell the females from the 
bachelors on the rookeries was curiously proven to me one day at Glinka, Copper 
Island, when Aleksander Zaikof and the chief, Sergei Sushkof, had a somewhat 
heated controversy over the question whether a certain body of seals on the IJrili 
Kamen Itookery consisted of bachelors or females. Both of the men are among the 
most experienced and intelligent on the island. Yet it was only because Sushkof 
had been stationed the whole season at Glinka, while Zaikof only arrived with us 
the day iirevious, that he was regarded to be in the right. 
But even at closer range it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the sexes. On 
the killing-ground, where the teeth of the seals are easily seen, there is, of course, no 
special difficulty, and mistakes are seldom made; not so in the drives, however. 
During a small drive at Glinka, Copper Island, August 8, 18!)o, about 300 seals 
were made to cross the mountain pass (about 800 feet) in three main divisions, no less 
than 30 grown men taking part in the driving. Halfway up one of the men declared 
that there was a “matka” in the drive. It was questioned, but uiion closer scrutiny 
he Avas found to be right. It was not until the final sorting before the killing took 
place that several females were discovered in the flock. 
As an additional indication of the lack of definition of the different classes of 
seals as expressed in their sizes, I append a few tables of measurements taken from 
the freshly killed animals. 
'The niunber of animals and the proportion of the sexes on North Rookery, Bering Island, 
during .Inly, 1893, as quoted by Dr. Sluuin (Proiuysl. Bog. Kam. Sakh. Komand., p. 9), from the official 
journal of the overseer (otfiisiaini (bievnik nadziraielia) are "worse than useless. The numeration by the 
overseer in question is the worst kind of guesswork, if not entirely fictitious. Dr. Slunin’s remark 
that the conclusions to he made from those figures would he strange (stranni) is certainly apiiropriate. 
S’. C. B. 1896-5 
