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of the Pribylov Islands from the United States Government at a rent of $55,000 or 

 £11,000 a year, and afterwards rented the other seal islands from the Enssian 

 Government. This companj^ since that time has slaughtered 100,000 seals annually 

 on the Pribylov Islands alone, for the sake of their skins, and yet has not diminished 

 in the least the abundance of the animals, but rather increased it. Yet it is practically 

 certain that if the seal islands had been open to hunters of all nations, considering 

 the great value of the skins, the numbers of the species would by this time have 

 been seriously diminished, and probably the species would ultimately have been exter- 

 minated. What is the reason of the different results obtained by the Company? It 

 is tlie story of the goose with the golden eggs. The old male seals are polj^gamous 

 and very pugnacious, and do not allow the young males to possess any wives at all. 

 The young bachelors live in a herd by themselves, and only these are killed ; no 

 females are destroyed. The check on the number of males is an advantage to the 

 species, for when there are too many, the amount of fighting that goes on in the 

 " rookeries " destroys a number of cubs. 



In the case of this fur seal a whole species has been practically made private 

 property without being in . any sense of the word domesticated. It is evidently 

 impossible for a company to acquire exclusive possession of the whole of any species 

 of marine fish. But our marine fisheries are the property of the nation, and the 

 fishermen can be controlled by legislation, if measiires can be found which have such 

 a relation to the conditions of life and reproduction of the various species as to result 

 in benefits both to the fishermen and the whole nation. 



Legal measures have from time to time been taken to prevent the reduction of the 

 numbers of valuable marine animals by prohibiting the capture of the young individuals 

 below a certain size. Such measures doubtless have a good effect when carried out, 

 for, in the first place, small individuals have generally a ver}' small value, while the same 

 individuals when full grown are worth many times as much ; and, in the second place, 

 if the young individuals are destroyed there will be no parents to succeed those from 

 which they were derived. But these measures, however effectively carried out, will not 

 prevent the scarcity of a species if the adults are constantly destroyed in such 

 numbers that there are not enoi;gh left to produce sufficient eggs to give rise to the 

 next generation. The latter has been the case with species of fish which ascend rivers 

 and estuaries in order to breed. A measure applied to prevent the too great 

 destruction of adults in this case is that of prohibiting the capture of any individuals 

 whether young or adult during the breeding period, the institution of " close seasons." 

 Now if the regulations concerning close seasons were carried out in regard to the 

 salmon in such a way that no adult salmon in a rivor in a given winter were killed 

 until after it had spawned, and all were killed after spawning, and at the same 

 time no immature fish were killed, it is clear that the result would be that each 

 fish that ariived at maturity would certainly breed once, and only once. And 

 there seems no reason why this should not be sufficient to maintain the abundance 



