306 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



James Kean (ibid., p. 448), a resident of Victoria, British Columbia, 

 ami seaman and seal hunter, gives his experience. He went seal hunt- 

 ing in 1889 on the schooner Oscar and Hattie. He left Victoria in the 

 latter part of February and went off south to the Columbia River, 

 and commenced sealing off there and followed the herd along the coast 

 up to Bering Sea, arriving there some time in June. They captured 

 somewhere about 500 seals before entering the sea. There were a good 

 many females among them. The old females had young pups in them. 

 He saw them taken out and a good many of them skinned. They 

 entered the sea and caught about 1,000 in there. Sometimes they were 

 over 150 miles off the seal islands; sometimes they were nearer. He 

 paid no attention to the proportion of females, but he knows that they 

 skinned a great many that were giving milk, because the milk would 

 run from their breasts onto the deck while they were being skinned. 

 They killed mother seals in milk over 100 miles from the seal islands. 

 They generally got them when they were asleep on the water. He 

 went out again in the Walter Rich in 1800, with very much the same 

 experience. He thinks that he got half of what he killed and wounded, 

 but he did not believe that the green hunters get more than one out of 

 every four or five that they kill. 



For detailed and circumstantial evidence that the proportion of 

 females taken to males was enormous, and that nearly all of these when 

 taken in Bering Sea were nursing cows, see: William Hermann, page 

 445; Norman Hodgson, page 300; O. Holm, page 3GG; Alfred Irving, 

 page 350; Victor Jacobson, page 328. 



James Jamieson, (ibid., p. 329) : This witness, Jamieson, had been sail- 

 ing-master of several schooners and had spent six years of his life seal- 

 ing. He testified that he always used a shot-gun for taking seals; that 

 over half were lost of those killed and wounded. A large majority of the 

 seals taken on the coast were cows with pups. Once in a while an old 

 bull is taken in the North Pacific Ocean. No discrimination was used 

 in killing seals, but everything was shot that came near the boat in the 

 shape of a seal. The majority of seals killed in Bering Sea are females. 

 He had killed female seals himself 75 miles from the islands, and they 

 were full of milk. 



To the same effect as to the large proportion of females nursing their 

 young, see James Kennedy, (-ibid., p. 449). 



James Kiernan, who had been engaged in sealing since 1843: 



My experience, [he says,] has been that the sex of the seals usually 

 killed by hunters employed on vessels under my command, both in the 



