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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



government has received about ten mil- 

 lion dollars in royalties paid on seal 

 skins. At the time of the transfer to 

 the United States, the herd numbered 

 about two and a half million animals, 

 but has now been reduced to about one 

 tenth of that number. The decline was 

 due to pelagic sealing which took ad- 

 vantage of the migration journeys and 

 distant feeding habits of the seals to 

 kill them in the open sea. In 1894 

 about 60,000 animals from the Pribilof 

 herd were killed in this way, mostly 

 females with unborn young or with 

 pups in the rookeries. It is said, fur- 

 ther, that from a half to three quarters 

 of the seals shot in pelagic sealing are 

 never recovered. 



Many efforts were made to do away 

 with the evils of pelagic sealing, and 

 finally in 1911 a treaty was dTawn up 

 according to which the United States 

 and Russia, as owners of the principal 

 fur seal herds, agreed to pay to Great 

 Britain and Japan fifteen per cent, 

 each of the product of their land-seal- 

 ing operations, on condition that pel- 

 agic sealing be abolished by those na- 

 tions for fifteen years. If no seals are 

 killed on the Pribilof Islands, the 

 treaty would be practically made of no 

 effect, and one might expect pelagic 

 sealing to be resumed. It is also true 

 that those best informed on the subject 

 hold that the killing of superfluous 

 bulls is a real advantage to the herd. 

 The seal is a polygamous animal, each 

 bull having an average family of fifty 

 cows. Fear of the adult males causes 

 the young males to herd by themselves, 

 and they may be driven away and 

 handled like cattle. If there are too 

 many bulls, there is continuous fight- 

 ing, and the pups are killed. The con- 

 ditions are somewhat similar to those 

 in the raising of cattle, the experts 

 wishing to use the methods commonly 

 in vogue, whereas the suspension of the 

 killing of superfluous males would lead 

 to the condition in which calves are 

 being raised in a field in which there 

 are a hundred cows and a hundred 

 bulls. 



It is certainly to be hoped that the 

 congress will accept the recommenda- 

 tion of President Taft and its own 

 experts and not interfere with the 

 proper interpretation of the treaty of 

 1911 and the best treatment of the 

 seal herd of the Pribilof Islands. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 

 We regret to record the death of 

 Dr. Lewis Swift, formerly director of 

 Mt. Lowe Observatory, known for his 

 discoveries of comets and nebulas; of 

 Mr. Samuel Arthur Sanders, a British 

 astronomer, and of Mr. William G. 

 Tegetmeier, the English naturalist. 



The national scientific societies at 

 the recent convocation-week meetings 

 elected presidents, as follows: the 

 American Physical Society, Professor 

 B. O. Peirce, of Harvard University; 

 the Geological Society of America, Pro- 

 fessor Eugene A. Smith, professor 

 emeritus of the University of Alabama 

 and state geologist; the Society of 

 American Bacteriologists, Professor C. 

 E.-A. Winslow, of the College of the 

 City of New York; the American 

 Botanical Society, Piofessor D. H. 

 Campbell, of Stanford University; the 

 American Anthropological Association, 

 Professor Roland B. Dixon, of Harvard 

 University; the American Psycholog- 

 ical Association, Professor C. H. War- 

 ren, of Princeton University; the So- 

 ciety of the Sigma Xi, Professor J. 

 McKeen Cattell, of Columbia Univer- 

 sity; the American Society of Nat- 

 uralists, Professor Ross G. Harrison, of 

 Yale University; the American Eco- 

 nomic Association, Professor David I. 

 Kinley, of the University of Illinois; 

 the American Historical Association, 

 Professor William A. Dunning, of Co- 

 lumbia University. 



It has been proposed to municipal 

 authorities of Paris that the memory 

 of Henri Poincare should be honored 

 where he taught, and it is suggested 

 that the portion of the Rue Vaugirard 

 between the Boulevard St. Michel and 

 the Odeon should be named after him. 



