FUR SEALS OF BERING SEA 467 
allowed to grow up as bulls and stallions to contest with one another 
the supremacy of the herd. 
The adult male fur seal is five times the size of the adult female 
and forty times the size of the young pup of a week old. In the 
struggles of the bull to defend his harem from other bulls, the young 
are trampled under foot and the mothers torn to pieces. This condi- 
tion was very conspicuous on the rookeries in 1896-7, when 5,000 
haremless idle bulls fought throughout the season with the 5,000 active 
bulls in charge of harems. This unfortunate condition in 1896-7 
was due to exactly what the Camp Fire Club would have repeated at 
the present time. In 1891-2-3 there was a modus vivendi, pending 

A “Pop” or Pup FuR SBALS. 
the action of the Paris Tribunal of Arbitration, which restricted the 
killing on land to a few thousand seals for natives’ food. The majority 
of the young males were allowed to escape and grow up as idle bulls, 
a source of injury and loss to the herd until eliminated by death in 
contests with one another or by old age. It is in the light of this 
experience and with a view to obyiating its repetition that the order 
of the secretary for the killing of the superflous young males becomes 
not merely good business policy, but beneficial to the herd. 
The criticism of the Camp Fire Club calls attention to the precarious 
condition of the herd, which is an admitted fact and one of grave con- 
