250 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



I should, perhaps, say that with all the care used many skins are greatly injured 

 in tlie working. Quite a quantity of English-dyed seal skins were sold last season 

 for $17, damaged in the dye. 



The above is a general process, but we are obliged to vary for diiferent skins. 

 Those from various parts of the world require 'different treatment, and there is <|uite 

 a difference in tlie skins from the seal islands of our country — I sometimes think 

 about as much as in the human race. 

 Yours, with respect, 



Geo. C. Treadwell & Co. 



H. W. Elliott, Esq. 



Fur-seal skins are of permanent value. — I have frequently 

 been asked whether, iu the light of probable caprices of fashion, the 

 value of fur-seal skins would at times shrink to a mere nominal figure, 

 or not. I think the history of this trade during the last twenty years, 

 at least, and since the skins have been treated for market as above 

 recited, that this record shows the fur-seal skin to be an article of 

 intrinsic value, just as objects of luxurious gold and silver work, of 

 precious stones, are and always will be, no matter what the style may 

 decree. That the demand made by the " mode" will sensibly appreci- 

 ate their fixed high value is also very certain, as.it does so to-day; but, 

 withdraw it, the seal skin is still a costly purchase to the wearer and 

 will ever be so. 



BERING, NOT BEHRING. 



Bering himself wrote his name " Bering." — I do not under- 

 stand the reason why a false sound should be given to this navigator's 

 name, when our alphabet is fully equal to its correct rendition. Here 

 is the way the Russians write it, and Bering himself signed his name 

 BnpnHn.=Bering (or Bereng), exactly in our own letter sounds. Yet 

 this unwarranted corruption of the true equivalent of a celebrated 

 name continues to be the common form of its exj)ression by publication 

 in England and this country. The Russians and the Danes sound the 

 letter "r"iu Bering precisely as we do; and the softened flattened 

 sound of " r," indicated by Behring, is an error that should be avoided. 

 It is originally a German corruption. Those Teutonic writers have 

 made the Russian nomenclature, as translated for us, by them, look 

 strange and sound odd to hundreds of English minds who know better; 

 but Forster, whom I quote below, was also a German, and hence his 

 testimony to the correct orthography of the subject in question is all 

 the more valuable, especially so since he says in the preface to his work 

 there cited: "The numerous researches upon which, more especially in 

 the ancient part, and that relative to the middle ages, I was obliged to 

 enter, the multifarious departments of learning, from which I have 

 derived some of the following notes and remarks, the orthography of 

 a proper name, has frequently cost me hours, and sometimes whole 

 days." 



Cogent reasons why it is "Bering." — Also in this relation 

 Professor Gill, of the Smithsonian Institution, informs me that "the 

 name of the navigator, which has been conferred on the strait separat- 

 ing America and Asia, is unquestionably spelled Bering and not Behr- 

 ing. I submit, in explanation, my reasons: First. The navigator him- 

 self was born in Jutland, and a scion of a Danish family whose members 

 bore the name of Bering and two representatives of which had the 

 same Christian name, viz, (1) Vitus Bering, born 1617, died 1675, some 

 time professor of poetry at Copenhagen, and (2) Vitus Bering, born 

 1682, died 1753, a priest of Ollerup and Kirkeby. The form Behring, 



