REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 247 



lai'S. As jiriccs from 17 to 22 dolhii's wore p;iid iu Victoria for these skins, somebody 

 lias beeu a great loser, and tlio prospect now is that fewer vessels will engage iu the 

 business next season, and that i)rices will rule still lower. 



Of the migratory habits of fur-seals but little has liitherto Ijeen made known, for 

 those who have had the information to give have had an interest directly opposed to 

 imparting the truth. Hence the fallacious assertion has been made and stoutly 

 maintained by the monopolists and their mendacious hirelings that all the fur-seals 

 of the North Pacific Ocean congregated on the rookeries of the islands of the Priby- 

 loff group, and if they are allowed to be killed by the poachers and pirates, whom 

 the general public know as honest, industrious, energetic fishermen and hunters — 

 the fur-seal will become extinct, and Miss Flora McFlimsey will have nothing to 

 wear, poor girl! But the scientific nivestigatious of the United States and Royal 

 Commissions, and particularly the latter, who have made the migrations of the seals 

 a special study, will show that the habits of all migratory animals, both birds and 

 beasts, are governed by natural laws. The seals, like the great herds of buffalo, 

 formerly so abundant, and the myriads of wild fowl from the north, are not (each 

 kind) one single great body. The buffalo were found in great droves from Texas to 

 the Assiniboine and the Red River of the north, but they were not all iu one band. 

 The herds from Lower Texas never went north to the upper limits, nor did the herds 

 of the extreme north ever seek their feeding ground iu Southern Texas. Every baud 

 had its own range. So of the Canada geese and other wild fowl, which were popu- 

 larly declared to visit the regions of the North Pole every spring to propagate their 

 young. No one thought or dared to assert to the contrary, but when Colonel Goss, 

 the celebrated ornithologist, found the nests and eggs and young of the Cana-tla 

 goose in Kansas, and other observers have discovered these so-called Arctic breeders 

 rearing their young at the head-waters of the Missouri and Mississi])pi, it was found 

 that popular belief regarding natural history is not always scientific fact, and so as 

 to the habits of the fur-seal. They do not move iu one immense herd to Behring 

 Sea, but iu droves and bands or schools like fish, all over the great expanse of the 

 North Pacific Ocean. Dr. Dawson, of the Royal Commission, said, as reported in 

 the Victoria "Colonist" of the 13th October: 



"Very little has been published about the migrations of the seals on the North 

 Pacific coast before they enter the Behring Sea, and this point is one from which we 

 got a lot of interesting matter. We have taken u. good deal of evidence about the 

 presence of seals at Cape Flattery, and have been told that they were more numer- 

 ous last spring than they have ever been before I find a peculiar idea 



existing among those who claim to be authorities iu regard to seals found in the 

 waters of South America, especially about Tierra del Fuego and the Straits of 

 Magellan. The notion that they are the same species of seal as those found iu Beh- 

 ring Sea and the North Pacific is quite erroneous. They are of a dift'ereut genus 

 altogether." 



So also will these scientific investigations show that a portion of the so-called 

 California seal, which comes north every season, does not enter Behring Sea at all, 

 and that its habits in many respects ditter essentially from those which visit tbe 

 rookeries on the Pribyloff Islands. These California seals do have pups somewhere 

 on the coast, either at the Farallones or furth-^r south, or on the great kelp patches, 

 as is clearly shown by the young ])uiis which annually make their appearance with 

 the herd, and are taken and brouglit into Neah Bay by the Indians every season, 

 and it is further proved that these pups will swim at birth, and even when taken 

 from their mother betbre birth, thus showing a difference of habits between the 

 Pribyloff' Islands seal and those taken at Cape Flattery. These facts about the 

 habits of the fur-seals of Cape I'lattery, which I have known lor more than thirty 

 years, have this year been proved to be correct by the Royal scientists, and will 

 seem to show there are always two sides to every question. While I join with all 

 the sealers with whom I have conversed that there should be a close season on the 

 Pribyloff' Islands, when no seals should be killed on those islands or in Behring Sea, 

 I equally join with some of the more intelligent and observing of these sealers that 

 the hunting of seals along the coast of Washington, British Columbia, and South- 

 eastern Alaska does not in any way afi'ect the seal catch on the Pribyloff Islands, as 

 there is every reason to assume that these coast seals noA'cr enter Behring Sea. 



When we consider how the development of the fisheries of the North Pacific have 

 been paralj'zed by this seal controversy, and our fishermen have been driven by the 

 mistaken policy of our Government to seek protection under the British flag, we 

 may well exclaim, "This is a sorry sight." The fishermen of Gloucester and other 

 eastern ports, who were protected by our Government in their fisheries on the 

 Atlantic, almost to the verge of hostilities with Great Britain, find that when they 

 come around Cape Horn to engage in the same peaceful and honourable vocation in 

 the North Pacific, Behring Sea, and the Arctic Ocean, they are denounced by the 

 same Government as poachers and pirates. They take notlVng but the products of 

 the ocean. They roll no man. Yet because a powerful Syndicate of capitalists 

 demands the right to monopolize the taking of seals to furnish articles ot luxury 



