ALASKAN HERD. 257 



less than twenty vessels in the business, is appli- Prohibition of 



]>eliigic sealing iu 



cable to this method or protection; for, as has^enugSoa. 

 already been stated, the sealing- vessels at that 

 time seldom entered Bering Sea, confining their 

 operations almost entirely to the North Pacific,^ 

 and therefore a larg-e increase in the fleet, even 

 though excluded from that sea, would ultimately 

 cause the practical extinction of the herd. Tlie 

 British Government, through its Minister to the 

 United States, Sir Julian Pauncefote, in April, 

 1890, submitted proposals for a convention, in 

 relation to the sealing industry in Bering Sea 

 and the Sea of Okhotsk, in which Great Britain, 

 Russia, and the United States should join. In 

 these proposals the area suggested to be closed 

 included hot only Bering Sea, but a considerable 

 portion of the Pacific Ocean south of the Alaska 

 Peninsula and the eastern Aleutian Passes.^ 

 And in the earlier correspondence Great Britain 

 even proposed to extend the legislative protec- 

 tion as far south as the forty-seventh parallel.^ 

 Sir George Baden-Powell, one of the British 

 Berino- Sea Commissioners, m an article which 

 was published in "The New Review," February, 



^ Ante, -p. 166. 



2 Letter of Sir J. Pauncefote to Mr. Blaine, dated April — , 

 1890, inclosuro 1. 



3 Mr. White to Mr. Bayard, April 20, 1888; Marquis of Salis- 

 bury to Sir L. West, April 16, 1888. See also Sir Julian Pauucefoto 

 to Mr. Wharton, June 11, 1891, 



2716- — 33 



