500 



FAMILY PHOCID.E. 



capture of Seals in later years. The results of the seal-fishery 

 for the year 1868, he states as follows : 



Takeu by 5 German ships 17, 000 



Taken by 5 Danish ships 5, 000 



Taken by 15 Norwegian ships 63, 750 



Taken by 22 British ships 51, 000 



making a total of 136,750, while 100,000 more were taken in 

 Greenland. Great numbers are also killed about Nova Zembla 

 by the Eussians, whose sealing-fleet in 1865 is said to have num- 

 bered twenty-six vessels. According to Sporer, three hundred 

 Seals were taken at Nova Zembla in three days in three nets.* 

 Lindeman gives a tabular statement of the number of vessels 

 engaged in seal-hunting from the ports of Southern Norway for 

 the five years ending with 1868, together with their tonnage, size 

 of the crews, value of the ships, number of Seals taken by each, 

 etc., from which I compile the following : 



Prom the foregoing it appears that the number of Seals taken 

 by the same fleet in different years is exceedingly variable, 

 ranging from about 48,000 in 1864 to upward of 83,000 in 1867, 

 and that while in 1864 more old Seals were taken than young 

 ones, there were taken in 1866 five times as many young ones 

 as old ones. In 1870, according to Captain Jakob Melsom,t of 

 Tonsberg, eighteen vessels (three of them screw-steamships) 

 from Southern Norway captured 55,375 young Seals and 30,- 

 390 old ones, or 85,765 in all. The greatest number brought in 

 by a single vessel was 9,400. This year and the year 1867 are 

 said by Captain Melsom to be the best years the Norwegian Seal- 

 hunters had experienced up to that date. 



The British sealin g- vessels are mainly from D undee. Accord- 

 ing to statistics given by Mr. Eobert Brown the number from 



*Petermann's Mittheil., Nr. 21, 1867. 

 tPetermann's Geogr. Mittheil. 17 Band, 1871, p. 340. 



