170 



The catch of 1883 had been a fairly prosperous one, the 

 total exceeding 400,000. He had much pleasure in moving 

 a hearty vote of thanks to Captain Temple for his able and 

 exhaustive paper. 



Major SEWELL-GANA (Chilian Commissioner), in second- 

 ing the motion, remarked that in consequence of the great 

 development of seal fisheries in and about the Straits of 

 Magellan, the Chilian Government had lately appointed a 

 Commission to study the question, and they were about to 

 introduce a law to enforce a close time, and to extend to 

 that region the regulations of the civil code with regard to 

 fishing. 



Mr. MARTIN said he should like to add a few words on 

 the subject of the paper. Captain Temple had stated that 

 seals were to be found more or less all over the globe, but 

 he had only described in detail the Canadian and Pata- 

 gonian fisheries, the latter of which he referred to as the 

 South Sea fisheries, but he thought Captain Temple would 

 agree with him that they might be better localised as the 

 Cape Horn fisheries. He had omitted to refer to the Lobos 

 Island fisheries off the river Plate, which yielded 10,000 

 to 14,000 skins per annum. Then there were the South 

 Sea fisheries, which he might call the South Shetland 

 Island fisheries, which were of a more speculative character, 

 for he had known one vessel come back from those islands 

 with a load of one skin. On the other hand, they some- 

 times got large quantities. One point he wished to notice 

 was that Captain Temple seemed to fear a deficiency in 

 the supply of seals, but he thought there was not much 

 danger of that, for England and Norway had now entered 

 a compact to regulate the Greenland fisheries ; the English 

 boats were not to leave for the Greenland fisheries before 

 a certain date, and on the introduction of this law a 



