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 in 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-
