18 SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 
American vessels, with the exception of two or three, made poor catches. 
Sealing with spears in Bering Sea has therefore been profitable to Cana- 
dian rather than American vessels. 
In respect to the claim that Bering Sea weather is sufficiently unfavor- 
able for sealing to afford the seals protection from excessive spear 
hunting, the accompanying tables, although based on incomplete data, 
show that there was only one day during the season, from August 1 to 
September 21, when seals were not taken, and it is possible that when 
all the data are accessible through exchange with Great Britain it will 
be shown that seals were taken daily throughout the season. 
-The same tables indicate that storms in Bering Sea are local in their 
nature, vessels to the westward of the Pribilof Islands having been 
hove-to, while others to the southward were making good catches. 
COMMENT ON THE PROPORTIONS OF THE SEXES REPORTED BY 
THE SEALING FLEET. 
I have compared the proportions of the sexes of seals taken in Ber- 
ing Sea by the Canadian and American fleets, and having considered 
both in the light of depositions now in the possession of the Treasury 
Department, made by London furriers, I can not admit that the propor- 
tion of male and female seals reported by the vessels is correct. Ameri- 
can sealers reported a greater proportion of females, and in no case 
reported more males than females, as some of the masters of Canadian 
vessels have done. The latter were sealing very close to vessels report- 
ing from two to five times as many females as males. When I ques- 
tioned the masters of the schooners Favorite, Walter Rich, Henrietta, 
etc., as to their alleged greater number of males, their explanations tome 
were that their seals were skinned in the canoes by the Indians, and 
the pelts thrown on deck as they returned after dark, and that under 
the circumstances they had no time to bother with inspecting skins 
minutely as to sex. Such returns are unreliable, and there is no doubt 
about the proportion of female seals taken by the Canadian fleet being 
much greater than reported. This is borne out by the sworn state- 
ments, now in possession of the Treasury Department, of Messrs. Mar- 
tin and Teichmann, of London, as to the sex of seal skins derived 
from the pelagic catch of 1894 in Bering Sea and the North Pacifie 
Ocean. These gentlemen personally inspected some of the largest con- 
signments of seal skins taken in 1894 and found 85 to 90 per cent of 
them to be females. 
Mr. Lupp, of San Francisco, a seal hunter of several years’ experi- 
ence, informs me that the catch of 1,400 seals made by the vessel he 
sailed with on the Japan Coast in 1892 consisted almost entirely of 
females with young, there being less than 50 males in the entire lot, 
and that of a catch of 1,100 seals taken by his vessel, the Louis Olsen, 
in 1894, in the same region, all were females but about one dozen. 
Mr. John Fanning, who cruised as a hunter with the schooners Denny 
and Retriever, informs me that nine out of every ten seals taken on the 
Japan Coast by him were females, and that when sealing off the Com- 
mander Islands eight out of every ten were females in milk. I ques- 
tioned other sealers on this point, eliciting similar statements. 
In view of the above statements of London furriers, the statements 
of masters of Canadian vessels as to the uncertainty of their method 
of ascertaining the sex of each day’s catch, and the statements of Japan 
Coast sealers as to the great proportion of females in pelagic catches, 
to say nothing of our knowledge of the subject from results apparent 
