82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



arrest any diminution in numbers and restore the herd to its normal 

 condition. For an area of protection perpetually closed to pelagic 

 sealing, the British commissioners suggested a zone about each island 

 ten miles in width. When it is remembered that the two principal 

 Pribilof Islands are each about a dozen miles long and nearly half 

 as wide, and that they are approximately distant forty miles from 

 each other, the utter inadequacy of such a suggestion is at once 

 evident. To the consideration of a closed time during which all 

 sealing at sea should be prohibited, they were not at all inclined, 

 except it were so limited as to be practically valueless. They strongly 

 urged the recommendation of a scheme in which it was assumed that 

 some sort of a relation might be established between the number of 

 seals permitted to be killed on the islands and the pelagic catch. 

 This relation was to be elastic and compensatory, and its advocacy 

 logically compelled the extraordinary declaration that sealing at sea 

 could be as vigorously and exactly controlled and restricted as seal- 

 ing on land. 



In short, it became more and more evident every day, as the 

 conferences continued, that the representatives of the people who 

 were engaged in pelagic sealing were set upon opposing any recom- 

 mendations looking either to its destruction or to its serious curtail- 

 ment. Apparently the question was not so much How will this 

 measure or that affect the vitality of the seal herd? as How will it 

 affect the profits of this nation or the losses of that? The possible 

 preservation or destruction of a useful and rare species was lost sight 

 of in the consideration of immediate gains, compensatory regula- 

 tions, equivalent shares, etc. The American commissioners, while 

 not unwilling to discuss all proposals to limit and control sealing, 

 both on land and at sea, became so thoroughly convinced that there 

 was but one efficacious remedy that they felt compelled to reject 

 all schemes of improvement in which that was not insisted upon. 

 Indeed, nothing else was offered or considered which, in their judg- 

 ment, gave even small encouragement of success in actual practice. 



Under these circumstances it was only possible to agree to dis- 

 agree. A very brief joint report was finally settled upon and drawn 

 up, in which the only conclusion of any importance whatever was a 

 most cautious and circumspect declaration that there had been a 

 diminution in the number of seals annually resorting to the Pribilof 

 Islands, and a hesitating admission that " man " must be held respon- 

 sible for it. 



It is worth noting that during the entire conference there was a 

 singular anxiety and desire on the part of the British commissioners 

 to secure from their American colleagues some formal admission 

 regarding or recognition of pelagic sealing as a legitimate mode of 



