FUR SEALS OF BERING SEA 405 
THE MUCH MISUNDERSTOOD FUR SEALS OF BERING SEA 
By GEORGE ARCHIBALD CLARK 
ACADEMIC SECRETARY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CAL. 
fa public press has recently engaged in a spirited discussion of 
the affairs of the fur seals of Bering Sea which is remarkable 
for the popular misapprehension it discloses of the real facts of this 
problem, which has been before the public as a national and interna- 
tional issue for a quarter of a century. The recent discussion was 
precipitated by certain criticisms, by the Camp Fire Club of New York, 
made against an order of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for the 
killing of the annual quota of young male seals during the current 
season. The order of the secretary was not a new or unusual one. 
A similar order has been given each season for the forty years in 
which the herd of the Pribilof Islands has been in the control of the 
United States, and was in vogue for the half century or more of Russian 
control. | 
This order called for the killing of 8,000 of the superfluous young 
males to secure their skins. It is the way in which the government 
harvests the product of. its fur seal herd. The order is exactly analo- 
gous to one which the owner of a herd of 100,000 cattle might give 
to his agents to drive up and slaughter for market 8,000 young steers. 
Other analogies might be found in the methods of handling sheep, 
poultry or any other of our domestic animals from which we derive 
food or raw material of value and utility. 
The fur seal is a polygamous animal, a fact which the Camp Fire 
Club seems to overlook. Actual enumeration shows that 29 out of 
every 30 males born are superfluous for breeding purposes. A reason- 
able proportion of these 29 may be killed for commercial uses without 
injury to the herd and their withdrawal will have no more effect on the 
life of the herd than the killing of a like number of steers would have 
on a herd of cattle. 
Moreover, it is not merely feasible and safe to take these animals, 
but it is beneficial to the herd that they should be removed. ‘To let 
these young males grow up to adult age would precipitate a condition 
of fighting and struggle on the rookeries which would be injurious in 
a high degree to the welfare of the herd. To illustrate by another 
analogy, the condition which their exemption from killing would pro- 
duce on the fur-seal rookeries would be exactly like that which would 
exist on the cattle range if all the young male calves and coltg were 
VOL. LXXVII.: —32. 
