8t> SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



tiou of two seal lives for every adult seal killed. In Bering Sea, also, large numbers 

 of females are taken; these females are in milk, and their young die of starvation on 

 the rookeries. 



Pelagic sealing as an industry is of recent origin, and may be said to date from 

 1879. The number of vessels engaged has steadily increased, as has the number of 

 seals killed, until it appears that unless checked by international legislation the 

 commercial exterminatiou of the seal is only a matter of a few years. It seems a 

 fair inference, therefore, that the only way to restore the depleted rookeries to their 

 former condition is to stop taking seals at sea, and not only in Bering Sea, but in 

 the North Pacific as well. 



Having been selected by my Government solely as a naturalist, and having investi- 

 gated the facts and arrived at the above conclusions and recommendations from the 

 standpoint of a naturalist, I desire to know if you agree or differ with me in consid- 

 ering these conclusions and recommendations justified and necessitated by the facts 

 in the case. 



I shall be greatly obliged if you will favor me with a reply. 

 Very truly, yours, 



C. HART MERRIAM. 



REPLIES TO C. HART MERRIAM. 

 REPLY OF DR. ALPHONSE MILNE EDWARDS. 



PARIS, April SO, 1892. 



SIR: I have rend with great interest the letter you addressed me with reference to 

 the fur seals of Bering Sea, and I think it would be of real advantage to have con- 

 certed international measures so as to insure an effective protection to those valuable 

 animals. 



To-day the means of transportation at the disposal of the fishermen are so great, 

 the processes of destruction which they employ are so improved, tint the animal 

 species, the object of tlieir desire, can not escape them. We know that our migra- 

 tory birds are during their travels exposed to a real war of extermination, and an 

 Ornithological international commission has already examined, not unprotitably, all 

 the questions relating to their preservation. 



\Vould it not be possible to put fur seals under the protection of the navy of 

 ivilized nations? 



What has happened in the Southern Ocean may serve as a warning to us. 



Less than a century ago these amphibia existed there in countless herds. In 1808, 

 when I- aiming visited the islands of South Georgia, one ship left those shores carry- 

 ing away 14,000 seal skins belonging to the species Arctoceplialus australis. He him- 

 self obtained 57,000 of them, and lie estimated at 112,000 the number of these animals 

 killed during the few weeks the sailors spent there that year. 



In 1822 Weddell visits these islands, and he estimates at 1,200,000 the number of 

 skins obtained in that locality. The same year 320,000 fur seals were killed in the 

 South Shetlands. The inevitable consequences of this slaughter were a rapid 

 decrease in the number of these animals. So, in spite of the measures of protection 

 taken during the last lew years by the governor of the Falkland Islands, these seals are 

 still very rare, and the naturalists of the French expedition of the Roman che remained 

 for nearly a year at Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands without being able 

 to capture a single specimen. 



It is a source of wealth which is now exhausted. 



It will soon be thus with the CaUorhinus urn him in the North Pacific Ocean, and 

 it is time to insure to these animals a security which may allow them regular 

 reproduction. 



I have followed with much attention the investigation which has been made by 

 the Government of the United States 011 this subject. The reports of the commis- 

 sioners sent to the Pribilof Islands have made known to naturalists a very large 

 number of facts of great scientific interest, and have demonstrated that a regulated 

 system of killing may be safely applied in the case of these herds of seals when 

 there is a superfluity of males. What might be called a tax on celibacy was applied 

 in this way in the most satisfactory manner, and the indefinite preservation of the 

 species would have been assured if the emigrants, on their way back to their breed- 

 ing places, had not been attacked and pursued in every way. 



There is, then, every reason to turn to account the very complete information which 

 we possess on the conditions of fur-seal life in order to prevent their annihilation, 

 and an international commission can alone determine the rules, from which the fisher- 

 men should not depart. 



Accept, etc., A. MILNE EDWARDS, 



Director of the Museum of Natural History. 



