Note 129 — Chapter X · AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. (continued 2)

The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congregations of Pinnipedia was one that was constant in my mind when on the ground and among them. I have found in the “British Annals” (Fleming’s), on page 17, an extract from the notes of Dr. Trail: “In 1833 I inquired for my old acquaintances, the seals of the Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years before they had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last few months begun to reappear.... About fifty years ago multitudes of their carcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, and numbers were found at sea in a sickly state.” This note of Trail is the only record which I can find of a fatal epidemic among seals. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Pribylov rookeries have never suffered from distempers in the past, or are not to in the future, simply because no occasion seems to have arisen during the comparatively brief period of their human domination.