PROPERTY IN THE ALASKAN SEAL HERD. 75 



States Commissioners bad they taken the same view of their functions. 

 Their conception, however, of the duties imposed upon them was widely 

 different. They regarded themselves as called upon simply to ascertain 

 the truth, whatever it might be, concerning "seal life in Behring Sea 

 and the measures necessary for its proper protection and preservation." 

 This seemed to them essentially a scientific inquiry, and not to embrace 

 any consideration of national rights, or of the freedom of the seas — a 

 class of questions which they would probably have deemed themselves 

 ill qualified to solve. They are not, indeed, to be presumed to be less 

 interested in behalf of their own nation than their associates on the side 

 of Great Britain ; but as they did not conceive themselves charged with 

 the duty of protecting a supposed national interest, they could remem- 

 ber that science has no native country, and that they could not defend 

 themselves, either in their own eyes, or before their fellows of the scien- 

 tific world, if they had allowed the temptations of patriotism to swerve 

 them from the interests of truth. Their report is earnestly recommended 

 to the attention of the Tribunal as containing a statement of all the 

 material facts relating to seal life, uncolored by national interest, and 

 clearly presenting the scientific conclusions which those facts compel. 

 From the evidence classified as above, which may be regarded as 

 being before the Tribunal, we now proceed to collect the principal facts 

 relating to seal life, and the methods by which the animal is pursued 

 and captured, so far as those facts are material in the inquiry whether 

 the United States have the property interest asserted by them. For the 

 principal facts of seal lite we borrow the statement contained in the re- 

 port of the United States Commissioners. 



PRINCIPAL- FACTS IN THE LITE HISTORY OF THE FUR-SEAL. 



1. The Northern fur-seal (Callorhinus ursinus) is an inhabitant of 

 Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, where it breeds on rocky islands. 

 Only four breeding colonies are known, namely, (1) on the Pribilof 

 Islands, belonging to the United States; (2) on the Commander Islands, 

 belonging to Russia; (3) on Eobben Reef, belonging to Russia; and (4) 

 on the Kurile Islands, belonging to Japan. The Pribilof and Com- 

 mander Islands are in Bering Sea; Robben Reef is in the Sea of 

 Okhotsk, near the island of Saghalien, and the Kurile Island sare be- 

 tween Yezo and Kamchatka. The species is not known to breed in 

 any other part of the world. The fur-seals of Lobos Island and the 

 south seas, and also those of the Galapagos Islands and the islands oif 

 lower California, belong to widely-different species, and are placed in 

 different genera from the Northern fur-seal. 



2. In winter the fur-seals migrate into the North Pacific Ocean. The 

 herds from the Commander Islands, Robben Reef, and the Kurile 

 Islands move south along the Japan coast, while the herd belonging to 



