XV.] 
THE SEA-BEAR. 
281 
The only large animal which is still found on Behring Island 
in perhaps as large numbers as in Steller s time is the sea-lear. 
Even it had already diminished so that the year’s catch was 
inconsiderable/ when in 1871 a single company obtained for 
a payment to the Eussian crown, if I recollect right, of two 
roubles for every animal' killed, and exclusive right to the 
hunting, which was accordingly arranged in a more purposelike 
way. At certain times of the year the killing of the sea-bear 
is wholly prohibited. The number of the animals to be killed 
is settled beforehand, quite in the same way as the farmer at 
the time of killing in autumn is wont to do with his herd of 
cattle. Females and young are only killed exceptionally. Even 
the married males, or more correctly the males that can get 
themselves a harem and can defend it, commonly escape being 
killed, if not for any other reason, because the skin is too often 
torn and tattered and the hair pulled out. It is thus the 
bachelors that have to yield up their skins. 
That a wild animal may be slaughtered in so orderly a 
way, depends on its peculiar mode of life.^ For the sea-bears 
1 The number of these animals killed on Behring Island is shown by the 
following statement given me by Mr. Henry W. Elliot: 
In the Year 
1867 ... 
27,500 
[In the Year 
1872 ... 
29,318 
In the Year 
1877 ... 
, 21,532 
1868 ... 
12,000 
1873 
30,396 
1878 .. 
. 31,340 
1869 ... 
24,000 
1874 ... 
31,292 
1879 .. 
. 42,752 
1870 ... 
24,000 
1875 ... 
36,274 
1880 .. 
. 48,504 
1871 ... 
3,614 
1876 ... 
26,960 
During the eighteen years from 1862 to 1880 there have thus been shipped 
from Behring Island 389,462 skins. The catch on the Pribylov Islands 
has been still larger. These islands were discovered in 1786, but the 
number of animals killed there is not known for the first ten years ; it is 
only known that it was enormously large. In the years 1797-1880'—that is 
in eighty-four years—over three-and-a-half millions of skins have been 
exported from these islands. Iii recent years the catch has increased so 
that in each of the years from 1872 to 1880, 99,000 animals might have 
been killed without inconvenience. 
2 The traits here given of the sea-beaPs mode of life are mainly taken 
from Henry W. Elliot’s work quoted above. 
