THE RUSSIAN FUR-SEAL ISLANDS. 
83 
changes. In view of that improbability we can not accept a change of habit as the 
explanation of certain phenomena unless demonstrated beyond pei'adventnre, or no 
other reasonable explanation can be furinshed. Much less can we be expected to admit 
such changes simply u))Ou hearsay evidence or speculations of a general nature. 
Now, for the alleged changes in so far as they have had reference to the habits of 
the Commander Islands seals. 
The decrease in the number of killable seals on tlie rookeries has been attributed 
to their having been driven off to seek other haunts. It is alleged that they are 
staying at sea and that they are forming rookeries on the Kamchatkan coast. 
The evidence in support of these contentious are of the most indelinite kind. 
On a couple of occasions fur-seals are believed to have hauled out at certain nuiuliabited 
rocks on the eastern coast of Kamchatka. In the first place, the accounts are so 
devoid of details that it is impossible to attach much importance to them. In the 
second place, granting that fur seals do haul up there occasionally, what scintilla of 
proof is there that they have not done so always"?’ As a matter of fact, I heard these 
rumors of fur-seals hauling oiit on the coast of Kamchatka during my first visit, in 
1882-83, and I know positively that Captain Sandman contemplated a trip to go in 
search of the alleged rookeries as far north as the island Karagiuski. Nearly the 
whole eastern coast of Kamchatka, for a distance of more than 400 miles, is almost 
e>ntirely uninhabited and very seldom visited by man. 
The other evidence offered is the fact that lately the sealing schooners have been 
found taking fur-seals during the summer months off certain capes in Kamchatka, 
notably Cape Shipunski. Here the same objection obtains. What i)roof is there that 
seals might not always have been taken there in summer? Moreover, is it certain 
that the seals taken there by the schooners represent the bulk of the “killables” of 
the islands"? On the contrary, it is iirobable that these locations of schooners indicate 
the feeding-grounds of the females, as hinted at in another chapter of this report. 
Krashenuinikof’s statement that “ none of them are to be seen [on the east coast of 
Kamchatka] from the beginning of June to the end of Aitgust,” only relates to the 
immediate coast itself and not to the open sea, where pelagic sealers make their catches. 
The explanations offered of these alleged, but utterly unproven, changes of 
habits are diametrically opposed to each other. Those postulating that the regulated 
driving and killing of the bachelor seals on shore is causing the decrease of seals on 
the islands, explain that this interference with the seals has led them to seek other 
haunts — in this case the coast of Kamchatka. There was never any evidence that 
seals were driven away from any place frequented by them habitually and took uj) 
their abode habitually in some other place. Elliott (Monogr. Pribyl., 1882, p. 109, 
footnote), it is true, in speaking of the “rapacious hunters” that were drawn to the 
Commander Islands, states as follows: 
They a^jpear, as near as I can arrive at truths, from the scanty record, * * * to have 
killed many and harassed the other fur-seals entirely away from the island; so that there was an 
Interregnum between 1760 and 1786, during which time the Russian promyshleniks took no fur-seals, 
and were utterly at loss to know whither these creatures had fled from the islands of Bering and 
Copper. When they (the seals) began to revisit their haunts on the Commander islands, I can find no 
specific date. * * * j think, therefore, that when the fur-seals on the Commander islands became 
' They apparently did so occasionally more than 1.50 years ago, if Krashenninikof’s statement, 
that “they seldom come ashore about Kamchatka,” means anything. 
