INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS OF FISHERIES ON THE HIGH SEAS. 135 
cradles the young animals increase rapidly in weight, so that at four weeks the 
pelt weighs about 40 or 50 pounds and the oil and the skin are in prime condition 
for commercial use. At this age the young seals are easily captured by vessels 
which penetrate among the ice floes, carrying men who descend upon the ice 
and club them to death in large numbers, single vessels sometimes slaughtering 
several thousand in a day. 
There are two principal fisheries for seals in the northern Atlantic, the 
so-called Newfoundland fishery and the Jan Mayen or Greenland fishery. 
Although two or three of the vessels are owned in Scotland, the Newfoundland 
fishery is prosecuted entirely from St. Johns in that colony, so that colonial 
legislation has been found sufficient for its regulation and protection. The 
Greenland fishery is carried on between Greenland, Spitzbergen, and the island 
of Jan Mayen, but mostly within 400 miles of that island; and the vessels engaged 
therein have sailed from Scotland, Norway, Germany, and to a less extent from 
Denmark and Sweden. 
Forty years ago this fishery was extensive, the annual take of pelts num- 
bering about 200,000. Owing to the small area on which the seals breed and 
the large number of vessels employed, there was much competition among the 
fishermen in being the first on the ground, and very many young seals were 
slaughtered within a few days after birth, when they were wholly defenseless, 
making no effort to escape from the clubs of the hunters, and almost complete 
extermination of the herd was relatively easy. Furthermore, the pelts secured 
were very small, whereas had they been permitted to remain for two weeks 
longer the average value would have been several times as great. 
There has never been an international convention, treaty, or arbitration 
for protecting these animals, but a close season has been established through 
analogous municipal enactments by each of the interested nations acting in 
concert. Norway and Sweden took the initiative in this matter and by infor- 
mal concert were quickly followed by Great Britain, Denmark, and the Neth- 
erlands. Each power legislated independently for itself, and its legislation 
operated only on its own subjects. These regulations may be repealed, respec- 
tively, at the pleasure of the enacting state without notice to the other powers 
interested. Each nation acts with complete independence in the enforcement 
of its own regulations, no provision whatever being made for one government 
to arrest or otherwise interfere with foreign fishermen violating the regula- 
tions, which is probably the principal feature of the important conventions 
previously discussed in this paper. 
In Great Britain legislation on this subject began with an act of Parliament 
passed on June 14, 1875 (38 Vict., ch. 18), which empowered the Queen in 
council, being satisfied that other powers concerned had made or would make 
the like regulations as to their ships and subjects, to prescribe a close time for 
the seal fishery in the area included between the parallels of 67° and 75° north 
latitude, and the meridians of 5° east and 17° west longitude from Greenwich, 
