REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 259 



14. — Letter from Captain David Gray, Peterhead. 



Pktekhead, June 3, 1892. 

 Sir: I had the honour yesterday to receive your communicatiou, asking for infor- 

 mation regarding the hair-seal iishiug in the North Atlantic. 



Tlie Jan-Mayen Convention provides that no seals are to be killed within the limits 

 detailed in the Act, namely, from latitude 68 N. to latitude 75 N., and from the 

 meridian of Greenwich west to the Greenland shore. The j)eualty for killing a seal 

 before the 3rd April is 500i., payable to the informant. 



There are no police required to enforce the close time; each ship's crew looks after 

 their neighbours, so that the close time in the Greenland seas has been very strictly 

 kept. 



The effect of the close time on the seals is to protect them during the time they are 

 bringing forth their young, and gives them a few days' quietness to nurse them, and 

 is beneficial in so far that it prevents the old seals being killed before the young are 

 born, and also allows a proportion of mother seals to escape to continue the species; 

 beyond this the close time does not go. The young broods were very olteu clean 

 swept up, so that not one escaped. 



The Newfoundland seal fishery is conducted in a different way; the St. John's 

 people, having the control of the fishing themselves, do not allow the ships to leave 

 before a date. This year the 15th March was the day fixed for the steamers 

 187 leaving. Sailing-ships are allowed to sail eight days sooner. The Newfound- 

 landers are becoming more strict every jear; the sailing day was five days 

 later this season than last, and they have to stop fishing on the l^Oth April. 



To sum up, the position is this: at Greenland the close time will prevent the seals 

 being exterminated, but it will not allow them to increase. 

 At Newfoundland their present mode of fishingmeaus, in a few years, extermination. 

 I have, &c. 



(Signed) David Gkay. 



Sir George Baden-Powell, M. P., 



Foreign Office, London, S. W. 



15. — Mr. W. Palmer on the killing of Seals npon the Pribyloff Islands, 



The following are extracts from a paper read by Mr. William Palmer, Taxidermist 

 to the Smithsonian Institution, before the Biological Society of Washington, in 

 October 1891. Mr. Palmer visited the Pribyloff Islands in an official capacty in 1890. 

 The first part of the paper from which these extracts are made gives some general 

 account of the fiabits of the seal, together with remarks on pelagic sealing, with 

 which subject, however, Mr. Palmer was not personally familiar. The portion of 

 the paper quoted below is that giving the result of Mr. Palmer's own observaticms 

 made on the breeding islands, and is, therefore, of value as a record of the conclu- 

 sions thus arrived at by him: 



Natural History. 



fate of the fur-seal in AMERICA. 



[Read before the Biological Society of VVasliington, District of Columbia, October 17, and illustrated 



by Lantern Slides.] 



The present condition of the Alaskan fur-seal islands is but another illustration of 

 the fact that the ignorance, avarice, and stupidity of man liaAe succeeded in reducing 

 an overwhelming abundance of animal life, that by careful and considerate treatment 

 would for ever have been a source of immense wealth, to such a condition that it 

 becomes a question of great moment to devise means to prevent its extermination, 

 and adopt measures to restore its former abundance. 



But pelagic seal fishing is not the only cause of the decrease of seal life on the 

 Pribyloft's. 



Probably, an equal cause is the unnatural method of driving seals that has been 

 followed on the islands since the first seal was captured. 



The mere killing of seals as conducted on the islands is as near perfection as it is 

 possible to get it. Tbey are quickly dispatched, and without pain. One soon rec- 

 ognizes, as in the killing of sheep, that in the quickness and neatness of the method 

 lies its success, all things considered. 



But the driving is a totally difterent matter. I doubt if any one can look upon 

 the painful exertions of this dense crowding mass, and not think that somewhere 

 and somehow there is great room for improvement. It is conducted now as it always 

 has been: no thought or attention is given to it, and, with but one exception, no 

 other method has been suggested, or even thought necessary. 



