i 3 2 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



not believe there will ever be a glutted market ; but the poachers 

 under another flag will undoubtedly start up again. 



Meantime the record of the Alaska Seal is a triumph for the 

 preservation of fur-bearing life, and points the way how to preserve 

 a supply of furs for a fur-hungry world. 



The present classifications for Seal are : 



Inches 



Wigs Above 55 



Extra extra large 49 to 55 



Extra large 46 to 48 



Large 43 to 45 



Mediums 39 to 42 



Small Mediums 35 to 38 



A good many years ago when cruising the shores of Labrador 

 and Newfoundland on a commission other than fur life I little 

 dreamed that the Harp Seals floundering on the rocky coast in myr- 

 iads with the plaintive whimper of a puppy dog, or crying child, 

 would ever become a factor in fur. 



The baby Harps were in those days captured in hundreds of 

 thousands every spring for their blubber. Boats left Newfoundland 

 in March, to spear the babies on the floating ice floes ; and the 

 tragedies of the spring Harp Seal hunt are a story in themselves, 

 that would fill a book. I used to go out to the harbor of Kitty 

 Viddy outside St. John's, Newfoundland, and listen to the thrilling 

 yarns of old sealers who had been carried off by a floe separating 

 from the other ice and drifted to sea, or whose steamer had been 

 crushed by a backwash of ice in a Nor'-easter gale and gone down 

 with all hands who did not escape to the ice. The story has been 

 told again and again by the late Dr. Harvey, the great naturalist 

 and discoverer of the great devil fish, and by Sir Patrick McGrath, 

 both of whom I met on that trip and number as friends, whom it is 

 good to remember. I heard the same story up at Greguet on the 

 Straits of Belle Isle and off Battle Harbor, Labrador, where Strath- 



