EIGHTEENTH DAY, MAY s^h, 1893. 



Mr. CouDERT. — I propose, with the jiermission of the learned Presi- 

 dent and the Court, to resume tlie rending of extracts from the United 

 States Case on page 115. The extracts that I shall read are on very 

 important topics, and the statements are very clear and very terse. 

 This is now as to the habits of the cows and the excursions that they 

 make when they are feeding and so on. 



Necessarily after a few days of nursing her pup the cow is compelled to seek food 

 in order to provide suflQcient nourishment for her offspring. Soon after coition she 

 leaves the pup on the rookery and goes into the sea, and as the pup gets older and 

 stronger these excursions lengthen accordingly until she is sometimes absent from 

 the rookeries for a week at a time. 



The food of all classes of fur-seals consists of squids, fishes, crustaceans and 

 molluscs, but squids seem to be their i)rincipal diet, showing the seals are surface 

 feeders. On account of the number of seals on the islands tish are very scarce in the 

 neighbouring waters; this necessitates the cow going many miles in search of her 

 food. 



They undoubtedly go often from one hundred to two hundred miles from the 

 roolieries on these feeding excursions. This fact is borne out by the testimony of 

 many exijcrienced sealers, who have taken nursing females a hundred miles and over 

 from the islands, and Captain Olsen, of the steam schooner Ainia Beck, states, 

 through the Victoria Daily Coh^uist, of August Cith, 1887 (which is published in the 

 British Blue Book, 1890, C-(3131, page 84), that anyone who knows anything of sealing 

 is aware that such a charge (catcliing seals in Alaskan waters within three leagues 

 of the shore) is ridiculous, as we never look for seals within 20 miles of shore. They 

 are caught all the way from between 20 and 150 miles off the land. Captain Dyer, 

 of the seized sealing schooner Alfred Adams, confirmed the above statement by say- 

 ing: "We had never taken a seal within 60 miles of Unalaska,nor nearer St. Paul 

 than 60 miles south of it." — Among the depositions taken before Mr. A. E, Milne, col- 

 lector of customs of the port of Victoria, British Columbia, several of the deponents 

 give testimony as to the usual sealing distance from the Pribilof Islands while in 

 Behring Sea. Captain William Petit, present master and i»art owner of the steamer 

 Mischief, gives such distance as from 60 to 100 miles, and states that seals are found 

 all along that distance from land in large numbers. Captain Wentworth Evelyn 

 Baker, master of the Canadian schooner C. B. Tapper, and formerly master of tho 

 schooner Viva, says that the distance, from land was, from thirty to one hundred 

 miles, usually sixty miles. And Captain William Cox, master of the schooner Sap- 

 phire, places the principal hunting ground at one hundred miles from the islands of 

 St. George and St. Paul. Captain L. G. Shepard, of tho United States Revenue 

 Marine, who seized several vessels while sealiug in Behring Sea in 1887 and 1889, 

 states, "I have seen the milk come from the carcasses of dead females lyiug on the 

 decks of sealing vessels which were more than a hundred miles from the Pribilof 

 Islands \" He Inrther adds that he has seen seals in the water over one hundred and 

 fifty miles from the islands during the summer. The course of sealing vessels and 

 their daily catch show also that the majority of the seals taken in Behring Sea are 

 secured at over one hundred miles from the Pribilof Islands. 



The distance that the seals wander from the islands during the summer in their 

 search for food is clearly shown by the "Seal Chart" compiled from the observations 

 of the American cruisers during their cruises in Behring Sea in July, August and 

 September, 1891. 



That Chart will be found in the volume of portfolios and maps. 



The great distance of tho ieeding grounds from the islands is not remarkable, as 



the seals are very rapid swimmers and ]tosses8 great endurance. Thomas Mowat 



Esquire, inspector of fisheries for British Columbia, in the annual report of the 



Department of Fisheries of the Dominion of Canada (1886), at page 267, makes the 



354 



