THE FUR SEAL OF COMMERCE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4341, 17 February 1875, Page 3

THE FUR SEAL OF COMMERCE.

(From th e British Trade Journal.) Sad accounts have just been forwarded to this country relative to the well nigh indiscriminate slaughter of seals in the high antarctic latitudes, recently visited by H.M.S. Challenger. They tell us that the seal hunters who annually go south to the Crosets, Kergulen Island, and other desolate places, for skins and oil, instead of only destroying a proportion of the adult males, put to death the females also, and the helpless cubs perish from cold and hunger alongside the dead bodies of their mothers. , ; The fur seal of commerce is the ■, Awtoccphalus ursinus , or “ Sea Bear *, ’ and is the species, par excellence, amongst all the seal family which yields the soft and valuable fur so highly prized and so extensively used. Our American Cousins have been looking after the fur seals that congregate in countless: numbers every season along the coast of Alaska and the Kurile Islands; and only the other day a highly interesting report was issued by the United States Government “ On the Pryhilov Islands, or Seal Islands of Alaska,” showing the state of these great rendezvous of the sea hears down to the summer of the present year, and giving hints for the practical management of. the fisheries in future. The author of .this very practical book, although devoting' hiinsolf ’principally to'-the seal hears,’ also gives a vivid account of the various islands of the group,together with'' their inhabitants, and the few animals and birds that visit that inhospitable region. ’ .Curiously enough,'’’the'

-volume isproiusoly. illustrated. v.dtiru, number.. of photograplis/in - the 'scenery 'appears to be mainly composed 1 of thousands of sea bears in every varietyof attitude. Being issiiedfor the private use of the United .States Government, only two or three copies of the report have up to the present time been re,- ; ceived in this country. . One of these is in the library of the 'Royal Geographical, Society in Savilleßow.; The,author is Mr. Elliott, Assis; - tant Agent in the Treasury Department,' United States Government. ■ , ■ , . Mr.. Elliott informs us that the finest sorts of, the true fur seals repair to these Prybilov Islands annually to breed, in fabulous numbers —'that but few members of the animal kingdom exhibit a higher order of instinct and intelligence—and, that the male sea bear is, of all brute polygamists, the most notorious. The adult' mail ’is from sJ'to 1 7i' - feet'in’ length, and weighs about'4oo lbs. ’Millions of them may be seen’at once on some of their “rookeries,” or breeding, grounds f along, .the coasts of the rocky islands they frequent. Intlie month of June the bull seals arrive in thousands, and the females come up out of the sea in still greater numbers about three or four weeks later.’. Some of the bulls display wonderful strength and courage. One curious habit these animals have recourse to, when they show signs of distress from a temperature of 45. to 48 degrees, the summer heat of the Prybilov Islands, is to fan themselves inces- ; santly with their .flippers whilst basking on their breeding grounds. This wavy motion of so many of the animals flapping and fanning at the same time gives a peculiar, effect of indistinctness to the whole sceneri-a, million or so of seals, of all ages, and in every attitude, all cooling, themselves ~ at, once by , this peculiarly • huinan process. When these migratory seals arrive off Kamtchatka. and the Kuriles in spring, they are’in high, condition, and the females are pregnant. . They remain on shore for about two or three months, during which period the females bring forth., They live in polygamous families, every male being surrounded by a crowd of from 50 to 80 or a 100 females; .whom, he guards with tlie greatest--jealousy. . -These families, including the young, frequently number 150 individuals, and crowd the shores to.such an .extent that on many of the islands of the N.W. point of America it is impossible to force a passage through them.; Both the males and- females are very affectionate to their young-, and fierce in their defence’; but the males/are often 'tyrannically cruel to the females, who are gentle and submissive. If one -fabiily encroaches on the station of’another, a general fight' is the'couse- ’ quence. They will not—iu-'fact, they dare not —leave their;.statipns, for if they did,".they: , must’ endroach on that of some other family.; They swim very swiftly, and are as great a ‘terror to the smaller species of seals,- such as the P. ■vituli/iius and the like, as the great sea lion is to them:’ The skin, which is very thick, is covered externally withhair like that of the common seal, hnt a gobd- deaj. longer, and standing erect'about the shoulders of the,', male. Beneath this external hair, the animal’s body is clothed in the soft wool, which, in a manufactured state, is.. familiar to ns all, and-is a large source of revenue; at this-par-ticular season of the-year to thei London and Continental.furriers,- in the shape of .ladies’, seal-skin cloaks,-jackets, trimmings, and other comfortable articles of wear for the winter. Sir George Simpson, who has had so ; many opportunities of , studying the habits-of the North American animals in their native haunts, speaking of the fur seal says —“ Some twenty or thirty years ago there was a-most wasteful destruction of the fur seal, when young’ and old, male and female, were indiscriminately knocked’ bn the head. This’improvidence, as every one might have ‘expected,’proved detrimental in two ways. ’-The race was almost extirpated, and the market was glutted to such a degree, at the rate of some 200,000 skins a: year, that the prices did not even 1 pay the expenses of .carriage. The Russians,. however,have now adopted nearly the.same plan’which the Hudson’s Bay Company pursues in recruiting any of its exhausted districts] lulling only a limited number of such males as have attained their full growth—a plan peculiarly applicable to the fur .seal, inasmuch as its habits render' the system of husbanding the stock as easy and certain as that of destroying it. The mode of capture is this ; at the . proper time, the whole, are. drivenj like a flock of slieep, to the establishment, which is about a mile distant from the sea, and there the males of four years, with the exception of a few that are,left to keep up the breed, are separated from the rest and killed. In the days- of promiscuous massacre,, such of - the mothers as had lost their pups wquld ever and anon’ return to the establishment, absolutely harrowing up the sympathies of the wives and daughters of the hunters, accustomed as they were to the scene, with their doleful lamentations.” ■ i | In’ the first few years after the establishmentwas made on St. Paul’s Island (Prybilov) from 50,000 to 60,000 were taken annnally—and on St. George from 40,000 to 50,000 each year. In 1803, 800,000 skins had accumulated, and it was impossible then to make commercial use of. so many, and thousands were spoilt. In the first thirty years were taken, according to Bishop ■yeniamunov, more than two and a half millions. The present selling-rates of raw skins by lessees are from $5 to is 9, and the whole.; Stock shipped to London, but the labor of dressing and dyeing raises the rate immensely, so that the skins when they leave the dressing factories for the furriers’ hands are held at from SI sto §4O each. The process by which the raw skin is plucked, dressed, and dyed for the market is a secret held by a few parties in London and one in America, but we are credibly informed that the labor is very tedious, and requires great mechanical skill, taking over two months to pass a skin through the different processes that lead up to its finished state. .Formerly the sea bear was abundant iu the Southern Hemisphere, and especially on the rocky shores of New Zealand; now, however, thanks to the indiscriminate slaughter system pursued there during the past thirty years, one of the finest of marine carnivora will soon cease to belong to the New Zealand fauna.