68 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
going on for a couple of years, tliougli not to tlie same extent. IsTow, if intelligent 
and honest i)ersons, at the close of the season of 1894, had been asked, wliile viewing 
that rookery, whether there were, say, 18,000 bachelor seals (outside the pups of that 
year) in sight or within a comparatively short distance, they would be obliged to answer 
no. The question then becomes pertinent: Whence, then, came the 9,000 bachelors 
killed in 1895 on that rookery (hardly any yearlings showed up at all) and the prob- 
able other 9,000 that perished during the winter by being killed by the pelagic sealers, 
or otherwise'? The bulk of these 18,000 must have stayed away froiu the immediate 
ueighborhood of the island, and as bachelor seals are not known to haul out in great 
bodies very far from the breeding-grounds there is every reason to conclude that they 
stayed at sea. 
To fully weigh this answer, it is necessary to remember that the baclielor seals, 
especially the younger classes, have no functions to perform on land during the breed- 
ing season. I do not believe that a single good reason can be advanced in defense of 
a pro})osition that the hauling out of the bachelor is of any advantage to the individual. 
hior does it seem probable that all the bachelor seals are subject to a very press /a// 
desire to go ashore until the sexual instinct is awakened. The hauling out on dry land 
by any immature seal is, therefore, only the result of the habit having been inherited. 
It is therefore likely to be of very varied intensity, and there is nothing intrinsically 
improbable in admitting that this habit in some, or even in many, is only awakened at 
the approach of sexual maturity. It must, furthermore, be borne in mind that the 
bachelor seals require au abundance of food no less than the females. The nursing of 
the young makes it imperative for the latter to visit the distant feeding-grounds, but 
also to return regularly to the rookery. The bachelor seal, on the other hand, in 
contradistinction to the old fat bulls remaining the entire season on the rookery, needs 
a big food supply because he is growing; but different from the female, he has no 
individual business on the rookery. Of course, while there is no advantage to the 
individual bachelor in hauling out, there is an advantage to the species, inasmuch as it 
tends to strengthen the inherited habit which insures the return of the necessary 
number of breeding males at a later age to their respective rookeries, but this propo- 
sition does not involve any necessity for all to do so. 
The above observations and reflections, which are chiefly submitted in order to 
emphasize that it is necessary to allow for a certain latitude in the habits of the seals, 
I am now going to follow up with a series of special observations upon certain x)hases 
of fur-seal life which I made during the investigations of last summer. They are in 
})art coi’roborative of observations made by investigators in other localities, X)articu- 
larly the Pribylof Islands, while, in part, opposed to the oiniuons held by some other 
observers. Iti so far as this diversity of opinion affects certain theories only, my 
deductions will stand or fall ui)on their own logic; but where there is a disagreement 
as to the facts I beg to remind my readers that the facts, as here set forth, only relate 
to the conditions found on the Commander Islands and more i)articularly on Bering 
Island. If the facts observed by me differ from those established by others, it does 
not necessarily follow that one of the two observations is erroneous. I will again 
recall the fact of the bachelors mixing among the females and the consequent driving 
of the latter on Bering Island in order to show there are differences between the 
conditions there and uimn the Pribylof Islands. 
