FURSE, DAME KATHARINE ), D.B.E. (1917), founder of the English V.A.D. force, was born at Bristol on Nov. 23, 1875, the daughter of the poet and critic John Ad dington Symonds (q.v.). In 19oo she married the painter Charles Wellington Furse (q.v.), who died prematurely in 1904. On the outbreak of war in 1914 Mrs. Furse realized the inadequacy of the existing number of nurses to deal with the situation, and in Sept. 1914 she went to France with a number of assistants who formed the nucleus of the V.A.D. force (Voluntary Aid Detach ment). In 1915 she returned to England, and the V.A.D. work was then officially recognized as a department of the Red Cross organization. In 1917 she became director of the W.R.N.S. In 1922 she was appointed assessor, representing the international organization of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides,. on the Child Wel fare Committee of the League of Nations Advisory Committee for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People.
a little group of marine carnivorous mammals forming the genus Callorhinus of the naturalists. The fur-seals resort, or once resorted, in vast numbers to crowded "rookeries." All the islands of the Southern ocean were densely peopled by fur-seals when first discovered; so were Juan Fernandez, the neighbouring Mas-a-Fuero, the Kuriles and the islands in Behring sea. On the other side of America, in the Plate estuary, the Lobos islands also have their seal herd. The history of nearly all these rookeries is one of wanton waste and rapid extermina tion. At Mas-a-Fuero, 3,000,00o skins are said to have been taken within ten years, but by 1807 the fishery was no longer profit able. The South Shetlands were discovered in 1819; within two years 95 vessels had loaded up with sealskins, and to all intents and purposes the rookeries were already exterminated. The only herds which have been more or less cared for, and the only ones which have escaped destruction, are those of the Lobos islands (Uruguay), those of the Pribyloff islands (United States), and, though to a much less extent, those of the Russian Commander islands.
The fur-seal is polygamous as well as gregarious. The bulls or sikatchi, live to a great age and grow to a great size, far beyond that of the females. They arrive on their breeding places in spring, choose their quarters on the rocky beach, and are joined a few weeks later by the cows (or matkas), who come in heavy with young. The pups (or kotik) are born soon after, and the comparative quiet of the rookery becomes a babel of angry noise. The bulls fight for possession of the cows, each striving to gather and keep a "harem" round him. The cows go out to sea to feed, but the bulls never leave their posts and fast throughout the season ; they come in fat and vigorous in May, and leave in autumn gaunt, lean and battle-scarred. The young males or bachelors (holloscizickie) keep to themselves, "hauling out" behind the breeding herd. Males and females are born in equal numbers ; and the economic management of a rookery consists in protecting all females, in leaving the harems undis turbed, and in taking such toll of the young bachelors as to leave enough to take the places of the breeding bulls.
The Pribyloff islands, discovered in 1786, passed into the hands of the United States with the Territory of Alaska in 1867; their great rookeries had been wastefully used and ruinously depleted to begin with, but the Russian Government had nursed them back into prosperity for 3o years, till at the time of the purchase they yielded 1 oo,000 skins a year, and did so for some 20 years after. But about 1880, pelagic sealing grew up, wherein young and old, males and females were killed without discrimi nation. This fishery soon showed its injurious effects upon the herd. After much arbitration the U.S. Government in 1911 took the fishery into their own hands, and pelagic sealing was finally abolished, on terms of equitable compensation. Moreover the killing of seals upon the islands was suspended for a number of years. The seal-population of the two Pribyloff islands had dwindled down to a bare 200,000 in 1912; it has increased steadily since, according to the official count, and amounted to over 800,000 in 1927. The Commander islands on the Russian side have a different tale to tell. The war and then the revo lution led to neglect ashore and to piratical raids from the sea; and an expert who had visited these islands in 1897 and came again in 1922 was "dismayed" at the shrunken rookeries.
See SEAL FISHERIES, CARNIVORA ; also H. W. Elliott, "Seal Islands of Alaska," U.S. Fish Commission Reports (1882) ; D. S. Jordan and others, Fur Seals and Fur Seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean (1898) ; "Reports by D'Arcy W. Thompson and others in British Par liamentary Papers (U.S.) ; "Report on . . . the Falkland Islands" (192o) ; and "Annual Reports" in the Bulletin of the Bureau of Fisheries, U.S.A. (D. W. T.)