PAST AND FUTURE OF THE FUR SEAL. 367 



sealing, but before so patient and generous a court it was not difficult to confuse the 

 issue of preserving the seals and continuing pelagic sealing and to take up a large 

 share of the proceedings with pleadings in behalf of the latter. They demanded that 

 the question of property right be settled from the standpoint that the seals were wild 

 animals, which man could only reduce to possession by destroying. They insisted that 

 the law relating to wild animals, regardless of its origin, had been accepted by nations 

 as the years ran on ; it was very old law and very good law ; but, whether good or bad, 

 it was the law, and from its teachings the tribunal must not allow itself to be enticed 

 away by the seductive citations and insidious arguments of learned counsel on the 

 other side. There must be no making of laws to suit new conditions ; the old stand-bys 

 must be adhered to, whether applicable or not. They urged that the seals being wild 

 animals, the United States had done nothing to encourage or develop in them the ani- 

 mum revertendi — the inclination to return to their homes, as in the case of bees and 

 similar creatures — and thus had lost their claim to a property in them, and if the world 

 or a part of it desired to turn out in boats and to destroy the industry by shooting 

 the seals in the water they had a perfect right to do so, for a wild animal was free to 

 all. No matter if seal mothers roaming the sea for food did fall before the gun or 

 spear of the pelagic hunter and their helpless pups starve on the rookeries, the hand 

 of destruction must not be stayed, for the United States had no rights anyone was 

 bound legally to respect when the seals were three miles off shore, and humanitarian 

 considerations had no place in the controversy. They insisted that the tribunal had no 

 authority in law to declare a property right in the seals or in the industry, but if the 

 tribunal contemplated disregarding the law and settling this question on lines of their 

 own choosing they must refrain from doing so, because it would interfere with that 

 wonderful invention, the immemorial right on the high seas, an interference nations 

 not only would not brook, but which they would actively resent. 



The tribunaPs decision. — The tribunal, true to the conservatism of the Old World, 

 accepted this interpretation of their powers, recognized the potency of venerable 'legal 

 relics, assented to the arguments of the counsel for Great Britain and Canada based 

 thereon, and contented itself with deciding that the United States had no right of 

 protection or property in the fur-seals. 



The regulations. — The next task to which the tribunal addressed itself, was the 

 framing of regulations. These regulations furnish the last hope for the preservation 

 of the fur-seal as a commercial commodity. It is not probable that any other nations 

 having seal interests will be content with less than the United States secured, nor is 

 it likely they will obtain more, and thus they represent the measure of protection all 

 seals are likely to receive in the future. 



After listening to an enormous mass of testimony, some good, some bad, and some 

 very indifferent, concerning seal life, the tribunal proposes to preserve the Alaskan 

 branch of the northern fur-seal by prohibiting sealing within a zone of 60 miles around 

 the Pribilof Islands; by establishing a closed time, or time of no killing at sea, from 

 May 1 to July 31 ; by permitting only sailing vessels to engage in the business of seal 

 hunting, and requiring them to carry a distinctive flag, to take out a special license, 

 and to keep a daily record of the catch and the sex of the seals taken, these records 

 to be communicated to each of the two governments at the close of the sealing season; 

 by limiting the weapons of capture to shotguns in the North Pacific and spears in 

 Bering Sea; and by requiring the two governments to take such measures as will 



