It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Russians themselves, with the object of testing that mooted query, during the later years of their possession of the islands, drove up a number of young males from Lukannon, cut off their ears, and turned them out to sea again. The following season, when the droves came in from the “hauling-grounds” to the slaughtering-fields, quite a number of those cropped seals were in the drives, but instead of being found all at one place—the place from whence they were driven the year before—they were scattered examples of croppies from every point on the island. The same experiment was again made by our people in 1870 (the natives having told them of such prior undertaking), and they went also to Lukannon, drove up one hundred young males, cut off their left ears, and set them free in turn. Of this number, during the summer of 1872, when I was there, the natives found in their driving of seventy-five thousand seals from the different hauling-grounds of St. Paul up to the village killing-grounds, two on Novastoshnah rookery, ten miles north of Lukannon, and two or three from English Bay and Tolstoi rookeries, six miles west by water; one or two were taken on St. George Island, thirty-six miles to the southeast, and not one from Lukannon was found among those that were driven from there; probably, had all the young males on the two islands this season been examined, the rest of the croppies that had returned from the perils of the deep, whence they sojourned during the winter, would have been distributed quite equally about the Pribylov hauling-grounds. Although the natives say that they think the cutting off of the animal’s ear gives the water such access to its head as to cause its death, yet I noticed that those examples which we had recognized by this auricular mutilation, were normally fat and well developed. Their theory does not appeal to my belief, and it certainly requires confirmation.