146 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



been canght by vessels sent out from British harbors. A large number 

 of the skins included in Exhibit D have been consigned to 0. M. Lamp- 

 son & Co. by the firm of Herman Liebes & Co., of San Francisco. In 

 estimating the total number of the Northwest catch it should also be 

 mentioned that something like 30,000 skins belonging to that catch have 

 been dressed and dyed in the United States, which have not gone to 

 London at all. 



(e) Besides the Alaska, Copper, and Northwest skins there are also 

 a certain number of skins arriving in London known as the Lobos 

 Island skins, although the same are not handled by the firm of C. M. 

 Lampson & Co., but the total number of which, from the year 1872 to the 

 year 1801, inclusive, is, as appears from the catalogues of sales, 247,777. 

 The Lobos Island skins are those of seals killed on the Lobos Island, 

 belonging to the Republic of Uruguay; and deponent is informed and 

 believes that there is no open-sea sealing in the vicinity of such island, 

 and that the animals are protected on the island as they are on the 

 Eussian and Pribilof islands, by prohibition from the killing of females 

 and limiting the number of males killed in each year. A statement of 

 the seals killed on Lobos Island is hereto annexed and marked Exhibit 

 E, from which it appears that there is a regular annual supply obtained 

 from that source, which shows no diminution. 



(/) There are also a certain number of skins sold in London obtained 

 from rookeries at or near the Cape of Good Hope, the exact number of 

 which deponent is not able to state, but which, he is informed, shows 

 a steady yield. 



The statements marked A, B, C, D, and E, hereunto appended, have 

 been carefully prepared by me personally, and the figures therein 

 stated have been comjjiled by me from the several sale catalogues of 

 C. M. Lampson & Co., and others from my private books which I kept 

 during all the years covered by the statements, and I am sure that 

 these statements are substantially accurate and truly state the respec- 

 tive numbers of the skins caught and sold Avhich they purport to state. 



(3) The great majority of the skins sold from the Northwest catch 

 are the skins of female seals. Deponent is not able to state exactly 

 what proportion of such skins are the skins of females, but estimates 

 it to be at least 85 per cent, and the skins of females are I'eadily dis- 

 tinguishable from those of the males by reason of the fact that on the 

 breast and on the belly of the bearing female there is comparatively 

 little fur, whereas on the skins of the male seals the fur is evenly dis- 

 tributed ; and also by reason of the fact that the female seal has a nar- 

 row head and the male seal a broad head and neck; and the skins of 

 this catch are also distinguishable from the Alaska and Copper catch 

 by reason of the fact that seals are killed by bullets or buckshot or 

 speared, and not, as on the Pribilof and Commander islands, by clubs. 

 Marks of such bullets or buckshot or spears are clearly discernable in 

 the skins, and there is a marked difference in the commercial value of 

 the female skins and of the male skins. This fact, that the Northwest 

 skins are so largely the skins of females, is further evidenced by the 

 fact that in many of the early sales of such skins they are classified in 

 deponent's books as the skins of females. 



(4) Deponent further says, that in his judgment the absolute prohibi- 

 tion of pelagic sealing, i. e., the killing of seals in the open sea, whether 

 in the North Pacific or the Bering Sea, is necessary to the preservation 

 of the seal herds now surviving, by reason of the fact that most of the 

 females so killed are heavy with young, and that necessarily the increase 

 of the species is diminished by their killing. And further, from the fact 

 that a large number of females are killed in the Bering Sea while on 



