Sixth Annual Meeting. 



very successful himself, has been present at many of our meet- 

 ings, and has always been a welcome addition. 



The motion offered by Mr. Evarts was adopted. 



Mr. Wilmot : I, in behalf of Mr. Witcher and myself I 

 return you sincere thanks for the compliment you have paid us 

 in expressing those handsome sentiments in regard to ourselves. 

 I thank you cordially for the manner in which you have ten- 

 dered it. 



Mr. Mather : If there is no subject under discussion now I 

 should like to call the attention of the Society to an item that I 

 saw in a newspaper about a week ago, perhaps, but which I have 

 unfortunately lost, and cannot even tell what paper it was in. 

 It was to the effect that certain parties in the vicinity of Mack- 

 inaw were about to place the first seal there, for the purpose of 

 breeding, and if any gentleman wants to know what effect that 

 will have upon the fisheries of that place, he can very easily see 

 by observing the habits of the seal in the Aquarium. It is not 

 what the seal eats so much as it is what he destroys. You can 

 feed them all they will eat, which is an enormous quantity of 

 fish, and then if they can get live fish they will play with them 

 as kittens will kill mice. They are very quick in the water, and 

 they will catch fish and come up and toss them from one to 

 another, and then go down and catch another and kill it, and 

 for every pound they actually eat they will kill twenty in play ; 

 and if there is such a movement on foot, I think this Association 

 ought to enter a protest against it in some way. 



Mr. Edmunds : We have recently seen seals in Lake Cham- 

 plain, and the question was whether they had been carried there 

 from some menagerie, or escaped from two different gentlemen 

 who have some in the state ; and I have from correspondence 

 with parties in Montreal learned that they are being caught in 



