470° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 

YouNG MALE SPALS—KILLABLE SEALS—-HERDED BY THEMSBELYES. 
route of the seals and included their summer feeding grounds in 
Bering Sea. 
The males being reduced in numbers by land killing, the females 
predominated in the herd as found at sea. On land the young males 
are forced to herd by themselves through fear of the adult males. 
They can be readily distinguished and handled without disturbance to 
the breeding herd. At sea the sexes can not be distinguished. On the 
spring migration the mother seal is heavy with young and hence less 
swift in her movements. On the summer feeding grounds she must 
feed regularly and heavily through necessity of nourishing her young. 
As a result the pelagic catch is made up chiefly of the breeding females. 
Investigations of the pelagic catches of 1895 and 1896 disclosed the 
fact that 65 to 85 per cent. of its skins were taken from gravid and 
nursing females. The young of these mother seals died unborn or of 
starvation on the rookeries. The writer counted 16,000 young fur seal 
pups which died of starvation on the rookeries of the Pribilof Islands 
sn the fall of 1896 as a result of pelagic sealing for that season. In 
1909 he found by actual count that 13.5 per cent. of the birth rate for 
that season were dead or dying of starvation in August of that year. 
From 1879 to the present time this hunting of gravid and nursing 
females has gone steadily on, with the consequence that the herd of fur 
seals belonging to the United States has been reduced from 2,500,000 
animals to less than 150,000 animals. | 
No other result could be expected from this wasteful and indis- 
