THE BERING-SEA CONTROVERSY. 79 



British commissioners on account of the character of instructions 

 received by their American colleagues, at least not until the latter 

 declined on account of such instructions to consider any question 

 at all related to the work of the commission. The incident is re- 

 ferred to only as one of many evidences of a tendency to avoid the 

 simple line of scientific inquiry upon which it had been hoped the 

 commission might work; and, further, that it may be recorded that 

 throughout the entire life of the commission the representatives of 

 the United States were absolutely free and unhampered in the exer- 

 cise of their personal judgment, not only as to the scope of their 

 powers but as well as to the attitude which they assumed on any 

 question coming before them. 



A preliminary basis of agreement had been prepared and was 

 submitted by the Americans at the first conference. Its first propo- 

 sition was a simple declaration of the decadence of seal life in Bering 

 Sea. It had hardly been suspected that there could be serious differ- 

 ence of opinion on this point, but there was an unwillingness to go 

 on record as believing that the herd was greatly declining in num- 

 bers, except in the most guarded manner. It was even affirmed by 

 the British commissioners that there was evidence to show that the 

 number found on the islands in the season of 1891 was greater than 

 in 1890. 



The second proposition submitted was a declaration that this 

 decrease in the number of seals frequenting the Pribilof Islands 

 must be attributed largely, if not wholly, to pelagic sealing. This 

 involved the gist of the whole controversy, and in support of it the 

 American commissioners offered the now well-known facts regarding 

 the natural history of the seal, the inevitable results of sealing at 

 sea, the impossibility of perfect control of land killing, the silent 

 but unimpeachable testimony of skins marketed by pelagic sealers, 

 and other evidence, the strength of which time has served only to 

 increase. There were certain facts of profound significance as af- 

 fecting this question which it seemed impossible to controvert. An 

 animal whose period of gestation is about one year, and which gives 

 birth to but a single individual, belongs to a species not likely to 

 multiply with great rapidity, even when left to contend only with 

 its natural enemies. Add to this the admitted facts that the two 

 sexes are equal in number at birth, and that polygamy is universal, 

 only one male being found on the breeding rookeries for every fifteen 

 or twenty females, and it follows with a certainty rarely met with in 

 discussions of this kind that the preservation of the herd depends 

 upon the preservation of the female, and that a very large proportion 

 of males may be taken annually without affecting in any way the 

 number born. Had a good set of " mortality tables " for seals ex- 



