CHAPTER XII 

 CONCERNING FUR SEALS 



Only two types of Seals may be considered as fur bearers. 



They are the Alaska Fur Seal and the Newfoundland or North 

 Atlantic Harp Seal. 



The Alaska Fur Seal is one of the rarest and most highly priced 

 furs. The Harp Seal is one of the cheaper furs but recently seen 

 on the American market, very becoming to children and people of 

 fair complexion, with leather strength in the skin proper, but too 

 recently on the market to say how durable the fur will prove in wear 

 and tear. It should certainly prove as durable as Alaska Seal, 

 which is essentially a fur for careful usage. The two furs can never 

 possibly be mistaken for each other. Alaska Seal is a deep golden 

 black brown. Harp Seal at time of writing is a light bluish gray 

 fur in its natural color; and up to the present, it is an undyed fur; 

 but any time, some new process may do for it what dyeing has 

 done for the muskrat and rabbit — in which case, it will be up to 

 Canada and Newfoundland to take such precautions to preserve 

 Harp Seal life as the American Government has taken to preserve 

 Alaska Seal life. 



No doubt, for another generation at least, Canadians and 

 Englishmen will resent the international treaty that forever ended 

 pelagic, or deep-sea sealing. With that controversy, a book on the 

 fur trade has nothing to say. 



Technically, perhaps, legally, the contention of Canada, Eng- 

 land and Japan may have justification. "Are not the high seas 

 outside the three-mile zone, and especially outside the sixty-mile 



I2S 



