Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/473

Rh 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 condition 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

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 obviating its repetition that the order of the secretary for the killing of the superfloussuperfluous [sic] 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 concern.