FIFTY-FIRST DAY, JULY 6^", 1893. 



Mr. Phelps. — Near the close of the argument yesterday, Mr. Presi- 

 dent, you put to me a question in respect to the point I was discussing 

 in bringing forward the evidence to show the very great percentage of 

 females that were embraced in the pelagic catch, — whether or not that 

 might be attributed to the fact that there were so few, comparatively, 

 of young males; in other words, whether this great preponderance was 

 a preponderance of the females or a scarcity of the males, 



I propose to answer that question this morning very briefly, and I 

 think very efiectively by referring to certain testimony in the case, 

 which shows that this great preponderance of females in the pelagic 

 catch was just as noticeable years ago when pelagic sealing first began 

 as it is at the present day after the effects of it, and the effects of any- 

 thing else in the management of the Islands, have transpired. In the 

 year of 1SG8, when pelagic giealing first began, Mr. Fraser, of the firm 

 of Lampson and Company in London, in his deposition which is in the 

 2nd Volume of the United States Appendix, page 557, from which this 

 is an extract, says: 



This fact, tliat the north west 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 classi- 

 fied in Deponent's books as the skins of females. 



It was SO noticeable in 1868 and afterwards, according to his deposi- 

 tion, that the whole catch was put down in the book as females. Mr. 

 Mclntyre, the special Agent of the United States, whose evidence is 

 prominently in the case on many points in his Official Report to the 

 Government in 18G9 and which will be found in the United States 

 Counter Case, page 84, uses this language in support of this supposi- 

 tion — 



That nearly all the 5,000 seals annually caught on the British Columbian coast 

 are pregnant females taken in the waters about the 1st of June, while apparently 

 proceeding northward to the Pribilof Group. 



Then Captain Bryant, a witness on whose testimony they rely on the 

 other side on several points, as we rely upon it, is also quoted in the 

 United States Counter Case at page 84, when writing of the year 1870 

 says ; 



Formerly in March and April the natives of Puget Sound took large numbers of 

 pregnant females. 



In August 1886, flear-Admiral Culme Seymour of the British iSJ^avy, 

 addressing the Admiralty — tliis will be found in the Appendix to Great 

 Britain's Case, vol. 3, United States, No. 2, 1800, page 1 — says : 



The British Colutuhian seal schooners seized [by] United States Revenue cruizer 

 Corwin, Behriug Straits, seaward 70 miles from oli" the land [?in the execution of] 

 killing female seals, and using tire-arms to do it, which they have done for thret3 

 years without interference, although in company with Corwiu. 



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