216 



during tlie wliole of that inontli. By the 1st or 10th of July, the entire 

 herd has left the North Pacific and reassembled at their breeding 

 grounds on the islands of St. Paul and St. George. As soon as the 

 mother seals reach the islands, or within a very few days thereafter, they 

 give birth to their pups, and take position with the bulls by whom they 

 have been appropriated. According to the evidence, the pups require 

 sustenance from their mothers for about eight or ten weeks. During 

 that period, say, during July and August, the mother seals, in vast 

 numbers, go out into the sea, in every direction, often to the distance of 

 100 and 150 miles, in quest of food to sustain themselves and their young. 

 Seals have been taken in the North Pacific in January, February, and 

 March, but not to any great extent. The opportunity for taking them 

 improves as the season advances. The last half of April and the 

 months of May and June are favorable for pelagic sealing, particularly 

 the two months last named. In Bering Sea the months of July and 

 August are also very favorable for seal hunting. While seals may be 

 taken in that sea duriug September, it is not, as a general rule, profit- 

 able to pursue the business there after August, or, at any rate, after 

 the middle of September. The principal mischiefs from pelagic sealing 

 have come from the killing of the seals in May and June, in the North 

 Pacific, while the herd is moving northward to their land home, and 

 from the killing in July and August, in Bering Sea, of breeding females 

 which have left their pups on the islands for a time and gone into the 

 sea in search of food. 



Our attention has been called to various schemes of regulations. In 

 1888 Mr. Bayard proposed a closed season for the period between April 

 15 and November 1 of every year, during which the citizens or sub- 

 jects of the United States and Great Britain should be prevented from 

 killing fur-seals with firearms or other destructive weapons, " north of 

 50° of north latitude, and between 1G0° of longitude west and 170° of 

 longitude east of Greenwich." But a much better scheme was agreed 

 upon, provisionally, as a basis of negotiations, at the conference subse- 

 quently held, in London, April 16, 1888, between the representb/tives of 

 the United States, Great Britain, and Eussia. By that scheme, if it 

 had been put into operation, a closed season, extending from April 15 

 to November 1 would have been established, during which no seals could 

 be killed in " the sea between America and Eussia, north of the 47*^ of lat- 

 itudeP But this scheme failed of adoption because of the intervention 

 and protest of Canada, which was effectual to prevent Lord Salisbury 



