600 Seal skins." He secured small catches at intervals during the following months, and started for home on March 31, 1831, with a cargo of 3,700 skins. In 1834 he made another voyage with two vessels to the same coast, visiting Ichaboe, Mercury, and Bird Islands. The first season's work amounted to only about 800 skins, the seals being scarce and shy. Respecting the next season (1835) he says: "The Seals having been harassed so much, the prospect was slim for the next season, but by putting men on the small rocks to shoot them, and by great diligence, we managed to secure about 1,000 skins to both vessels, which was a slim season's work." (Capt. G. L. Allyn. The Old Sailor's Story, as quoted by Mr. C. Howard Clark.)

Cape of Good Hope.

Sealing appears to have been abandoned for some years following on the African coast, owing to the low price of seal-furs and the scarcity of the seals. It has, however, since been resumed, and placed under restrictions by the Government of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the seal islands being rented to a sealing company under certain stipulated conditions, and poaching rigorously prohibited. The yield is small but steady, averaging about 5,000 skins per annum. Teichmann, of the London firm of furriers, C. M.

Government regu

iations.

(Affidavit of Emil Lampson & Co.)

PART III.

THE ALASKAN FUR-SEAL AND PELAGIC SEALING.

By J. A. ALLEN.

By request of the Secretary of State of the United States I have examined the report of the Commissioners appointed by the President in 1891 to investigate the subject of the fur-seal industry as conducted at the Pribilof Islands, and the influence of pelagic seal hunting in its relation thereto; also the numerous affidavits relating to the same subjects obtained by the Department of State from former United States Treasury agents in charge of the sealing industry at the said islands; from agents of the Alaskan Commercial, the North American Commercial, and the Russian Sealskin Companies; from officers of the United States Revenue Marine; from masters of sealing schooners and seal hunters engaged in pelagic sealing, and from the leading dealers and experts in the fur-seal trade, as well as the history of many now extinct fur-seal fisheries. I have also examined the reports, statistics, affidavits, and arguments contained in the Blue Books published by command of Her Britannic Majesty numbered C.-6131 (1890), C.-6368 (1891), C.-6633 (1892), C.-6634 (1892), and C.-6635 (1892), and the Annual Reports of the Department of Fisheries of the Dominion of Canada for the years 1885 to 1891, inclusive; in view of all which evidence and testimonies I submit the following statement in relation to the principal points of the subject:

Pribilof Islands.

Migration of seals.

1. The true home of the fur-seals of the eastern waters of the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea is the Pribilof group of islands in Bering Sea. It is to these islands that the Seals repair annually to breed, and there is no evidence that they breed elsewhere than on these islands. It is evident, from what we know of seal life elsewhere, that were the climate sufficiently mild in winter they would undoubtedly pass the whole year at these islands. Owing, however, to the inclemency of the winter months the fur-seals are forced to migrate southward in search of food and a milder climate. Some of the males, however, especially the bachelors, are known to remain about the islands, particularly in mild winters, nearly the whole year. Generally the greater part move southward and eastward to some point south of the Aleutian chain. They leave the Pribilof Islands much later in autumn than the females and young seals, and return thither much earlier in spring. The males in returning northward in spring evidently pass, in the main, much further from the coast than the females, and their northward migration is more rapid and direct.

The females on leaving the islands in the autumn move gradually southward as far at least as the coast of California, where they were formerly often seen in large numbers in January and February. Later in the season they proceed gradually northward, passing generally quite

near the coast, the route varying in different years, being evidently governed by the runs of fish and the position of the various fishing banks. They move leisurely as compared with the males, which have preceded them, the females being heavy with young, and pausing often to feed and sleep, but landing nowhere till they reach their sole and only breed ing grounds on the Pribilof Islands.

The Pribilof herd has thus had its own exclusive home, with fixed and definite lines of migration along the western coast of North America.

Commander Islands.

2. The Commander Islands herd is evidently distinct and separate from the Pribilof Islands herd. Its home is the Commander group of islands on the western side of Bering Sea, and its line of migration is westward and southward along the Asiatic coast. To suppose that the two herds mingle, and that the same animal may at one time be a member of one herd and at another time of the other, is contrary to what is known of the habits of migrating animals in general. Besides, while the two herds are classified by naturalists as belonging to one and the same species, namely, the Callorhinus ursinus, they yet present slight physical differences, as in the shape of the body and in the character of the hair and fur, as regards both color and texture, sufficient not only to enable experts in the fur trade to recognize to which herd a given skin belongs, but sufficient to affect its commercial value. As yet, expert naturalists have been unable to make a direct comparison of the two animals, but the differences alleged by furriers as distinguishing the representatives of the two herds point to their being separable as subspecies, in other words, as well-marked geographic phases, and thus necessarily distinct in habitat and migration.

California.

3. Since fur-seal breeding rookeries are reported to have formerly existed on some of the small islands off southern Cal Islands off southern ifornia, it has been assumed that they were a portion of the Pribilof herd, which sometimes remain south to breed. Such an assumption is entirely opposed to what is known of the habits and distribution of marine life and to well-grounded principles of geographic distribution, namely, that a fur-seal breeding on an arctic island, which it annually travels thousands of miles to reach, would also choose for a breeding station an island in subtropical latitudes. Fortunately the rebuttal of this assumption does not depend upon the generalizations of the naturalist, since specimens have been recently obtained from Guadalupe Island which show Guadalupe Island. that, while a fur-seal formerly occurred there, and is still found there in small numbers, it is not only not the Pribilof species, but a seal belonging to a distinct genus, hitherto only known as an inhabitant of the southern hemisphere. This Guadalupe Island fur-seal, of which I have had the opportunity of examining, in conjunction with Dr. C. Hart Merriam, a series of four skulls, proves to be a species of the genus Arctocephalus, and is apparently closely allied to the furseal of the Galapagos Islands, the previously most northern known limit of the genus. 4. There is not only no evidence to show that the fur-seal of the Pribilof Islands ever lands upon any part of the shore or on any part of the islands of the western coast of North America south of the Pribilof Islands, but there is also no evidence that it ever brings forth its young at sea, either in the water or on floating beds of kelp. Such a method of breeding is obviously a physical impossibility, when the character of the animal, and particularly the condition of the young at birth, is duly considered. The

Habits of Alaskan Fur Seals.

young fur-seal is exclusively a land animal for the first six or eight weeks of its life and does not voluntarily visit the water till about the end of this period. If placed in the water during the first few weeks of its existence it will quickly drown if left to itself. When first born it is encumbered for a greater or less length of time with the placental envelopes, which alone would insure its speedy death by drowning should parturition occur in the water. The young fur-seal avoids and is afraid of the sea until, at the age of six to eight weeks, it is conducted to the water and taught to swim by its mother. Of this fact the evidence is unanimous and overwhelming. The claim sometimes made that parturition may occur in the open sea or on beds of floating kelp rests on no sound evidence, and is doubtless due to misapprehension and careless observation.

5. The breeding female not only resorts to the land to give birth to her young, but remains there until she has been again Mode of propagation. impregnated by the male, which occurs ordinarily with

in a few days after parturition. Copulation in the water is exceptional, if ever occurring, and is probably impossible, owing to the immense disparity in size between the sexes, and the protracted and violent nature of the act. The presumption that it may occur in the water is entirely opposed to the well-known sexual economy of the species. The males are not only polygamous, but they take their positions on the rookeries long before the females arrive at the islands, fighting not only for the possession of their chosen stations, but for the females as they land, which they gather about them in as large numbers as possible, jealously guarding them not only from their rivals, but to prevent their escaping from their respective harems. If parturition and copulation could occur in the sea the exercise of any such tyrannical jurisdiction of the males over the females would be impossible and the seraglio system so well established not only in the case of this species, but in all its allies, would not be the one striking feature in the sexual economy of the whole eared-seal family, wherever its representatives are found.

6. Only males of 6 years old and upwards have the courage and physical endurance to render them successful contestants for positions on the breeding rookeries, and only a portion of these are able to establish harems and serve the females. It is a well established fact that a bull of this class is able to serve from forty to sixty females, the number he actually serves varying more or less according to his success in gathering the females to form his harem. As the number of males and females annually born is about equal, there is thus an immense superfluity of male life, so far as the unlimited perpetuation of the species is concerned. 7. The history of the Pribilof fur-seal herd shows that for a period of about 15 years it was possible to kill for commercial purposes 100,000 young male seals annually with not only no recognizable decrease or deterioration of the herd, but apparently a decided increase up to about the year 1880. The following three or four years is commonly recognized as a period of stagnation, during which time there was no very material increase or decrease. Since 1884, however, there has been a rapid decline not only in the number of killable males, but in the size of the herd as a whole.

Size of Pribilof herd.

8. This remarkable and unexpected decline originated through no change in the management of the fur-seal herd at the Pribilof Islands. During the last two or three years, lagic sealing. however, and in consequence of the decline from the

Decline due to pe

former status of the herd it has been necessary to lower the age of seals

selected for killing, and also to redrive portions of the herd, in order to secure even the greatly restricted quota allowed to be taken in 1890, the last year of killing for commercial purposes. This decline in the number of seals on the Pribilof rookeries is coincident with the increase in the number of seals taken by pelagic sealing in the waters of Bering Sea and of the North Pacific adjacent to the American coast. It is evident from the statistics of the Northwest catch, extending over a period of twenty years, that pelagic sealing must have begun to affect unfavorably the Pribilof herd as early as 1880, although its effect was not clearly recognized until a number of years later. These statistics show that the pelagic catch of the Northwest Coast from 1872 to 1884 aggregated upward of 150,000 seals, and that from 1885 to 1891, inclusive, the Northwest catch numbered upward of 330,000. The annual pelagic catch increased from about 20,000 in 1885 to upward of 60,000 in 1891. These figures alone indicate an immense and steadily increasing drain upon the Pribilof herd, from which almost solely this pelagic catch was drawn.

9. But the decline of the Pribilof her has been far greater than these statistics would in themselves seem to imply. A careWasteful character ful analysis of the character of the Northwest catch of pelagic sealing. and the methods of pelagic sealing affords, however,a complete and satisfactory explanation of the disaster that has overtaken the Pribilof herd. In the first place, there is reasonable, and apparently wholly conclusive, evidence that at least 80 per cent of the 480,000 Seals captured by pelagic sealing during the years 1872 to 1891 (including both these years), were female seals, by far the greater part of which were either heavy with young or had young dependent on them for nourishment when killed. Secondly, the actual catch as reported represents only a portion of the seals killed by the seal hunters, the average estimate of conservative and apparently impartial reporters being that about 60 per cent of the seals killed in pelagic sealing are lost. From the voluminous evidence in hand it is apparent that this estimate is much below the actual facts, startling as they seem. There is first an admitted pelagic catch of over 480,000 seals during the last twenty years; it is assumed that in taking this catch 288,000 additional seals were killed, making a total of 768,000. As at least 80 per cent of these may be assumed to have been females, either carrying young or having young dependent upon them, we may add 612,400 as the number of young seals (either unborn or nursing pups) destroyed through the death of the breeding females, making an aggregate loss to the Pribilof herd in twenty years of 1,430,000 seals. Of this total two-thirds were killed during the seven years preceding 1892, to which period the decline in the Pribilof herd is mainly limited. Throwing out of the account the number of seals killed and lost by pelagic hunting, the reported catch alone has involved the death of 500,000 seals in seven years. Hence the assumption that the total annual loss during this period consequent upon pelagic sealing must aggregate 100,000 is quite within the bounds of probability. This is an actual subtraction from the herd. If these breeding seals and pups had been allowed to live and reproduce, it is reasonable to suppose, making a liberal allowance for the natural death rate and for the continued killing of the usual number of young male seals on the rookeries, that they would have added at least 1,000,000 seals to the seal population of 1892. 10. The only element in serious controversy upon which the above estimates in part depend is the proportion of seals Proportion of killed in pelagic sealing and lost. While some pelagic wounded Seals lost. sealers claim (see affidavits in the British Blue Book,