REPORT OF AMERICAN COMMISSIONERS 377 



^^^lncll has already resulted so disastrously, and other remedies 



of DO avail. 



without any adequate means of controlling- the 

 magnitude of its developments. In short, if 

 we do not wish the history of the fur-seal in 

 Bering Sea to be a repetition of that of the 

 rookeries of the Southern Ocean and of other 

 localities where seals once flourished, measures 

 adequate to the existing- evil, heroic, if need be, 

 must be adopted. In 1889, Prof. W.H. Flower, P^'of. w. h 



^ ' r lower. 



director of the Natural History Museum, Lon- 

 don, wrote as follows, after referring to the total 

 annihilation of the rookeries of the south seas : 

 ''Owing to the ruthless and indiscriminate 

 slaughter carried on by ignorant and lawless seal- 

 ers regardless of everything but immediate profit," 

 he says, '' The only spot in the world where 

 fur-seals are now found in their original or even 

 increased numbers is the Pribilof groujD, a cir- 

 cumstance entirely owing to the rigid enforce- 

 ment of the wise regulations of the Alaska Com- 

 mercial Company, which are based on a thorough 

 knowledge of the habits of the animals. But for 

 this the fur-seal might before now have been 

 added to the long list of animals exterminated 

 from the earth by the hand of man." 



Less than three years have elapsed, and the Progress of ex- 

 termination. 

 catastrophe here hinted at is well under way. 



Its progress can be arrested only, we believe, by 

 271G 48 



