124 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
A final protocol, signed at Paris, July 7, 1887, fixed upon May 1, 1888, as 
the date upon which the instrument was to become finally operative. This was 
ratified by the United States on May 1, 1888, suitable provision for its enforce- 
ment having been already made by act of February 29, 1888 (25 Stat. L., p. 41). 
Practically all the other parties to the convention have enacted appropriate leg- 
islation for enforcing the regulations. And while these have safeguarded the 
property of the cable companies and the freedom of telegraphic communication, 
they have not imposed special hardship upon the fishermen or restricted their 
operations in any noteworthy degree. 
REGULATIONS OF THE FUR-SEAL FISHERIES. 
No attempt at regulating or restricting any branch of the fisheries on the 
high seas has caused more extended discussion or is more interesting from the 
point of view of this paper than the protection which the American and the 
Russian Governments have endeavored to give to the fur seals outside terri- 
torial jurisdiction in the North Pacific Ocean and tributary waters. 
The well-known breeding habits of this animal, and its resort to the same 
shores year after year, render its capture on the rookeries an easy matter. This 
resulted in the slaughter of millions of them a century ago and nearly extermi- 
nated the species in the southern seas. But on the Pribilof Islands, the great 
breeding grounds of the northern fur-seal herd, the Russian Government about 
1840 developed a system of management which tended to the greatest utiliza- 
tion with the least injury to the perpetuation of the resource. The keynote of 
this system was the absolute protection of the females, none whatever being 
intentionally slaughtered, and the killing was confined to the young males 2 or 
3 years old, 95 per cent of which are superfluous for breeding purposes, owing 
to the polygamous habits of the animal. Grouped by themselves on the rook- 
eries, the young males are surrounded, and those selected for slaughter are 
slowly driven off, precisely as one would drive a flock of sheep. 
Under this wise system of management the herd prospered, and contained 
probably 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 animals when the Pribilof Islands came into 
the possession of the United States with the transfer of Alaska under the con- 
vention of March 30, 1867. 
The act of July 27, 1868, by which the territory was erected into a customs 
district, made it the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury ‘“‘to prevent the 
killing of any fur seal,’’ except as it should be otherwise provided by law. By 
act of July 1, 1870, it was made “unlawful to kill any fur seal upon the islands 
of St. Paul and St. George, and in the waters adjacent thereto, except during 
the months of June, July, September, and October,” or ‘to kill such seals at 
any time by the use of firearms, or use other means tending to drive the seals 
away from the said islands.” And in August of the same year the Government 
leased the privilege of taking fur seals on the Pribilof Islands to a corporation 
