. Seal and salmon fisheries and general resources of Alaska. 00,000, in roundnumbers, is a fair enumeration, and quite within bounds of makes the grand sum total of the fur-seal life on the PribilofIslands over 4,700,000. INDUSTRIES. 101 The increase or diminution op the seal life, past, present,AND PROSPECTIVE.—One stereotyped question has been addressed tome universally by my friends since my return, first in 1873, from theseal islands. The query is: At the present rate of killing the seals,it will not be long ere they are exterminated; how much longer willthey last? Mj^ an
. Seal and salmon fisheries and general resources of Alaska. 00,000, in roundnumbers, is a fair enumeration, and quite within bounds of makes the grand sum total of the fur-seal life on the PribilofIslands over 4,700,000. INDUSTRIES. 101 The increase or diminution op the seal life, past, present,AND PROSPECTIVE.—One stereotyped question has been addressed tome universally by my friends since my return, first in 1873, from theseal islands. The query is: At the present rate of killing the seals,it will not be long ere they are exterminated; how much longer willthey last? Mj^ answer is now as it was then, Provided matters areconducted on the seal islands in the future as they are to-day, 100,000male seals under the age of 5 years and over 1, may be safely takenevery year from the Pribilof Islands, without the slightest injury tothe regular birth rates, or natural increase thereon; provided, also,that the fur seals are not visited by any plague, or pests, or anyabnormal cause for their destruction, which might be beyond the con-. - HIGH Plateau ^v**~ .•Q^itM^I^ GREAT EASTERNScale; IS trol of men; and to which, like any other great bod^^ of aniriial life,they must ever be subjected to the danger of. ^ The thought of what a, deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congre-gations ot Fmnepedia was one that was constant in my mind when on the groundand among them. I have found in the Britif^h Annals (Fleming s), on page 17, anextract trom. the notes of Dr. Trail: • In 1S33 I inquired for my old acquaintances,tlie seals ot the Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four yearsbelore they had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last fewmonths begun to reappear. * * * About fifty vears ago multitudes of theircarcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shet-land, and numbers were found at sea in a sickly This note of Trail is theonly record which I can find of a fatal epidemic amon
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