OBSERVATIONS ON THE FUR-SEAL. 577 



done to the seal herd in the few weeks of sealing in August than at 

 any other time. 



Permission was given by the Treasury Department to the lessees of 

 the seal islands to kill 20,000 young male seals in 1894. Notwithstand- 

 ing that only 7,500 seals had been killed there during each of the i>re- 

 eeding years and only 14,000 and 20,000, respectively, during the third 

 and fourth years before (against 100,000 annually for many years with- 

 out any detriment to the herd before the ravages of the poacher 

 began), the lessees were able to obtain only 10,000 marketable skins of 

 young male seals. 



The preservation of the Alaskan fur-seal under existing conditions 

 and regulations rests on the very slender contingency of the prevalence 

 of tempestuous weather during the month of August. Two or three 

 weeks of good weather at this time, by permitting the sealers to operate 

 without interruption outside the 00-mile zone and on the feeding-grounds 

 of the female seals, mean the ultimate and rapid destruction of the 

 seal herd on the Pribilof Islands. 



The Bering Sea question, when stripped of the maze of minor points 

 and diplomatic usages incident to its discussion and adjustment, offers 

 the following definite alternatives of settlement: 



(1) Shall the United States Government effectually and forever ter- 

 minate this international dispute by absolutely annihilating the Alaskan 

 seal herd as the animals arrive on the seal islands'? or 



(2) Shall the United States permit the pelagic poachers of British 

 Columbia to destroy the seals on their way to the rookeries and in the 

 vicinity, and thus ultimately destroy the legitimate industry of killing- 

 selected seals on the islands? or 



(3) Will the British Government enact laws to protect an industry 

 which is now generally conceded in America to have from the outset 

 been of more commercial interest to Great Britain than to the United 

 States? 



The first proposition may seem needlessly harsh and cruel, but the 

 action indicated is indeed humane and is fully warranted by the facts 

 that no amount of protection under existing regulations is adequate to 

 ] (reserve the seal herd and that the patrol of Bering Sea by American 

 naval and revenue vessels does not prevent the havoc wrought by the 

 pelagic hunters in killing annually 25,000 or 30,000 nursing female seals 

 and leaving their pups to die of starvation, besides sacrificing the same 

 number of unborn seals. Fo one who has had the opportunity to visit 

 the seal islands during the breeding season and witness the distressing 

 spectacle of thousands of young seals in various stages of starvation will 

 fail to acknowledge the merciless barbarity of pelagic sealing and the 

 humane principle involved in the proposition to wipe out the Alaskan 

 seal herd at one blow. 

 F . u. 94 37 



