BY SIR DOUGLAS iMAWSOX, Kt.l!., D.SO., B.E., O.B.K. 41 



In illustration may be mentioned National reserves 

 where indigenous life is afforded absolute protection, as, for 

 example, Laysan Island, in the Sandwich Group, which is 

 entirely set aside by the United States Government as a 

 sanctuary and breeding ground for marine birds; also our 

 own reserves in the several States of the Commonwealth, 

 where areas are set aside for the indigenous fauna. At 

 other times protective measures are adopted in relation to 

 the exploitation of certain animals where there is a danger 

 of indiscriminate slaughter leading to the extermination of 

 "the goose that lays the golden egg." As examples of this 

 kind may be mentioned, firstly, the International legislation 

 controlling the fur seal industry of the Pribyloff Islands, 

 where alone there now remain extensive rookeries of fur 

 seals; secondly, the control effected over the whaling and 

 sealing industry of that part of the Antarctic and Sub- 

 antarctic that falls within the jurisdiction of the Falkland 

 Islands and Dependencies. 



In both cases these latter restrictions refer to very 

 lucrative industries, which, but for the passage of wise legis- 

 lation, would ere this have been a thing of the past. Prior 

 to the inauguration of protective measures, the days of the 

 fur seal of the North Pacific were numbered; each succes- 

 sive year saw the rookeries greatly reduced. But in the 

 long period that has elapsed since indiscriminate slaughter 

 gave place to a rational treatment of nature's bounty, the 

 numbers of the fur seals resorting to the Pribyloff Islands 

 during the breeding season have at least remained undim- 

 inished. It would appear that fur seals were relatively as 

 numerous* 1) in the .Southern seas in past times as their 

 kindred in the Sub-Arctic; but the slaughter was carried on 

 with such vigour and without discrimination in the days 

 before measures for regulating the traffic were thought of, 

 that they have been practically exterminated, and thereby 

 a great and valuable trade lost to the Southern Hemisphere. 



So it is with all the larger wild animals of the world; 

 they are rapidly diminishnig in numbers, and this is especi- 

 ally so in the case of animals yielding products of connnercial 

 val,ic. It is only by the adoption of strict control over the 

 slaughter that such can hope to be preserved. In no in- 

 stance is this better marked than in the case of the whale. 



(1) There is rfcoid that 320,000 fur seals were taken from the 

 South Shetland Islands in the two seasons 1820-21. Krom Mar(iu«rie 

 Island it is likely that not less than 180,000 skina were taken between 

 the years 1810-13. 



