THE RUSSIAN FUR-SEAL ISLANDS. 
135 
how each of these alleged causes aijplies to the eouditious i)revailing on the Kussiau 
islands. 
It has been claimed that the driving of the male seals results in sapping their 
vitality and impairiug their procreative powers, thus causing a double decline by 
shortening the life of the individual and causing a smaller number of pups to be born. 
I have elsewhere in this report discussed this question. Here it will suffice to simply 
inquire, How do the facts observed on the Commander Islands agree with this theory'? 
I have already summarized the facts, but they will bear a brief repetition. On Bering 
Island the driving is so easy that even the black pups driveu in docks with the 
adults are uninjured; yet there was quite a dedciency in bulls, virile and otherwise. 
On Ooi)per Island the drives are beyond comparison the hardest known anywhere; 
yet there was a surplus of exceedingly virile bulls; and still, if we may be allowed a 
comparison with the Pribylof Islands, we may add that the decrease in killables on 
Copper Island is of a much later date than the corresponding decrease on the. Priby- 
lofs. jSTow, if the driving had had the slightest induence upon the numbers of the 
seals, how did it happen that the seals were increasing while it is a fact that the drives 
have never been easier, but if anything rather harsher? Nothing seems more 
clear and logical than this ]>roposition, viz, that if the driving is the cause of the 
decline, we should expect the falling off in bulls to have taken jilace on Copper Island, 
and not on Bering Island; but the reverse is Just the case. I am, therefore, com- 
pelled to absolve the driving of the responsibility for the decrease on the Commander 
Islands. 
The contention that the occasional raids practiced on the rookeries by marauding 
schooners are materially to blame for the decrease has found but slight sn^iport, and 
the experience on the Commander Islands does not substantiate it. I have shown 
that the Commander Islands seals were increasing in spite of the numerous raids in the 
early eighties; I have also shown how the little rock of Robben Island has continued 
to yield killable seals in spite of an unparalleled history of raids. It is safe to say that 
the annual catch of the raiders of the latter island greatly exceeded that of -the legiti- 
mate killing on shore, and yet the falling off in the yield is not greater than that of 
the other islands. 
There remains the pelagic sealing. Up to 1892 there was no startling decrease of 
the female seals on the Commander Islands rookeries, while there had been for a couple 
of years some difficulty in getting the former number of killables. In 1892 the sudden 
invasion of the whole body of the pelagic sealing fleet upon the unprotected feeding- 
grounds of the Copper Island female seals took place, followed by similar inroads in 
1893 and 1891. The melancholy decimation of the female seals on the Copper Island 
rookeries as witnessed by me in 1895 can 1 >e directly traced to this preying upon the herd 
off Copper Island. The extension of the hunt to the Bering Island feeding-grounds 
in 1895 explains easily the presence in great numbers of pups starved to death ou the 
Bering Island Rookery. Tlie somewhat earlier falling off in killables is attributable 
to the increase in the winter and spring catch off Japan. 
The simultaneous or sequential occurrence of the above facts and i>henomena is 
evidently more than a mere coincidence. As cause and result, they tit like a hand in 
a glove, and I have been unahle to resist the force of the logic which places the blame for 
the decrease of the Commander Islands seals npon pelagic sealing^ and upon pelagic 
sealing alone. 
