284 EVIDENCE OF DECREASE. 



My observations and experience in 1889 were about the same as in 

 the previous year, except as to the number of seals 

 Louis Culler, p. 321. seen, which was much smaller. There was a per- 

 ceptible decrease in the number of seals seen by 

 me in the year 1889 as compared with the year 1888. 



Hunters talk about the seals increasing from year to year, but 1 know 

 they are decreasing, and if they keep on killing 



A IfredDar dean, p. 323. them the way they do now there will not be any 

 left in a few years. 



A few years ago seals were very plentiful in the Straits of San Juan 

 de Fuca. It is not now so. They are so scarce in 



Frank Davis, p. 383. the straits that we do not hunt for them there any 

 more. * * * 



Onetime, when hunting along the coast with a spear, our canoe took 

 100 seals in five days, but we can not catch as many now. They are 

 very shy and wild, so that if we get two or three now in five days we 

 would be doing very well. I have caught only eight seals this year. 

 Before the white man came here to hunt seals with the shotgun and 

 rifle, live or six years ago, they were not so wild as they are now, and 

 by this time in a year 1 would have had a hundred or more seals. 



Years ago, in the winter time, seals were plenty in the Straits of 



San Juan de Fuca, and 1 have hunted and helped 



Jeff Davis, } . 384. to catch them up the straits as far a Pysht, which 



is about 37 miles from Cape Flattery. Of later 



years they have quit coming in the straits and we do not hunt for them 



there any more. 



Since the seal hunting began to be industriously pursued about the 



years 18S1-'.S5, and the transfer of American 



Jas.S. Douglass,p.38i. schooners to the British flae: at Victoria, British 



Columbia, took place to avoid seizure, I have been 



made acquainted, both from observation and conversation with sealers, 



of the fact of the growing scarcity of seals. 



The Indians report to me that the seal are very much scarcer than 

 they were in former years, and I know that they 



Wm. Dumcan, p. 279. don't bring in as many skins as they did in former 

 years, although skins are bringing a much better 

 price than they used to. 



the reports of the officers to me I learned that the seals were 

 much scarcer in 1891 than they were in 188S, when 



From 



Geo Fogel,pA2i. I first sent them out. 



I have gone out of the business because it became so unprofitable on 

 account of the scarcity of seals. 



####### 



A few years ago you could go off shore about 50 miles from San 

 Francisco and you would come across thousands of seals leisurely go- 

 ing north, while now we see but very few. I fitted out the schooner 

 Cygnet in 1871, which was one of the first sealers to go to the Bering 



