308 CAUSE. 



During my visits to the islands of St. Paul and St. George for the 

 last twenty years I have carefully uoticed that 

 M. A. Uealey, p. 27. those islands were visited by great herds of fur- 

 seals during the breeding season, and that al- 

 though 100,000 male seals were taken annually at the islands by the 

 lessees no perceptible diminution in their numbers was noticeable until 

 within the past few years, when the killing of seals in the open sea on 

 the part of fishing vessels became prevalent, since which time there 

 has been a very perceptible diminution in the number of seals seen in 

 the water of the Bering Sea and hauling grounds on the islands. This 

 decrease has become alarmingly sudden in the last three or four years, 

 due I believe to the ruthless and indiscriminate methods of destruc- 

 tion employed by vessels in taking female seals in the open sea. 



I made the conditions of seal life a careful study for years, and I am 

 firmly of the opinion their decrease in number 



W. S. Hertford, p. 36. on the Pribilof Islands is due wholly and entirely 

 to hunting and killing them in the open sea. 



When, in 18SG, we all saw the decrease of seals upon the hauling 

 grounds and rookeries, we asked each other what 

 Aggei Kushen, p. 128. was the cause of it, but when we learned that 

 white men were shooting seals in the water with 

 guns we knew what was the matter; we knew that if they killed seals 

 in the water that they must be nearly all females that were going out to 

 feed, for the males stay on the islands until they get ready to go away 

 in the fall or winter. It was among the cows we first noticed the de- 

 crease, and as we never kill the cows on the islands we knew they must 

 be killing them in the water. 



There can be no question, in my opinion, about the ultimate result 



to the rookeries of marine sealing. If it is con- 



Isaac Uebes, p. 455. tinued as it has been for the last two or three years 



the seals will be so nearly wiped out of existence 



in a short time as to leave nothing to quarrel about; and an article of 



commerce that has afforded a vast amount of comfort and satisfaction 



to a huge class of wearers and a large income to both American and 



British merchants will be a thing of the past. 



AMal P. Loud, p. 38. I am convinced that the decrease in the rook- 



eries was caused entirely by open- sea sealing. 



That there were no destructive agencies at work upon the island that 

 would nothave left the rookeries inbetter condition 



u. II. Mdniyre, p. 46. 1890 than they were in 1870; that until the effects 

 of the true agent of destruction began to be mani- 

 fest there was an excess of male life on the islands sufficient to permit 

 of an annual catch of 100,000 seals for an indefinite period without 

 jeopardizing the rookeries ; that if it be remembered that the seals 

 taken in the water by hunters are chiefly females, that their young die 

 with them and that all of those killed are not secured, and if then an 

 examination be made of the pelagic skins actually sold during the past 

 twenty years the real source of the depletion of the rookeries will be 

 found; that in my judgment such depletion was caused by pelagic seal- 

 ing, and that it grew greater from year to year as the number of so- 

 called poaching schooners increased ; and that its effects began to 



