Man and Nature 



433 



Sealing on tlie islands is restricted to tlie "Ijachelor" herd, 



the number taken each year being determined by the go 

 ment. The seals are rounded up and driven by a nu 

 of native drivers to the killing pens whei'e they are slangli 

 by a blow on the head with a club. Tiie skins are 

 removed and packed in salt for shipment to market. 



Despite the restrictions on the killing of the seals,, the 

 rapidly diminished to about one-tentli of its original 

 It was simply a repetition of "watcliing the spigot" 

 the "bung-hole" was allowed to take care of itself. 



vern- 

 mber 



lere<l 

 then 



herd 

 size. 



while 

 The 



A Seal Rookery on the Pribilof Islands, Alaska 

 Courtesy o/ the U. 8. Bureau of FishcHes. 



seals may be ever so well protected on their breeding grounds; 

 but if allowed to take care of themselves elsewhere they are 

 doomed to destruction. 



Realizing the threatened extinction of the herd by pelagic < 

 sealing^ our government decided to avail itself of a right 

 claimed by Russia in 1821, but never tested, of seizing all 

 vessels engaged in pelagic sealing in Alaskan Avaters, whether 

 within the three-mile limit or not. This immediately brought 

 on a controversy with Great Britain, whose Canadian subjects 

 were the ones chiefly affected. The result of this controversy 

 was arbitration before the well-known Behring Sea Tribunal, 

 which sitting in Paris in 1895 decided adversely to the United 



