360 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



I would further respectfully suggest that before any permission be 

 given, the name of the zoologist be submitted to me, in order that the 

 Department may be satisfied as to his capacity. Mr. Brown requests 

 that his letter be considered confidential. 

 I have the honor, etc., 



S. WIKE, Acting Secretary. 

 The SECRETARY OF STATE. 



1318 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, 

 Washington, D. C., April 82, 1896. 



SIR: In reply to your note of this date, I have to say that Mr. J. M. Macoun is a 

 botanist officially connected with the Canadian geological survey. He is an agree- 

 able and amiable gentleman to whom personally I feel most kindly, but in the sense 

 of having knowledge of animals he is not a naturalist at all. In 1892, while study- 

 ing seals and their habits on the Pribilof Islands, he confirmed a report of Dr. Ever- 

 inan's to the effect that they had in company seen a number of dead female seals at 

 Northeast Point, St. Paul Island. The investigation which was immediately made 

 showed that the creatures they had seen were the pups of the sea lion and at least 

 three out of five were males. 



Upon his return to Canada, Mr. Macoun prepared a report which was printed as 

 pages 134 to 156 of the appendix of the Counter Case of Great Britain, vol. 1. This 

 report is so filled with his own version of conversations and statements of other 

 individuals, insufficient observations, conjecture, and statements made with the 

 evident intention of misleading those unfamiliar with the subject, and is so lacking 

 in the frank and honest spirit of scientific investigation that he should not be again 

 received by the United States as a representative of Great Britain in any capacity. 

 The whole report was made under the supervision of Dr. Dawson, one of the British 

 Bering Sea commissioners, and was designed to form an adjunct to and bolster up 

 that extraordinary and thoroughly discreditable document, the report of the British 

 commissioners. Mr. Macoun is a subordinate of Dr. Dawson's, and any future 

 investigations by him will be carried out in the same spirit and within the same 

 purpose as were those of 1892. 



The natural history facts relating to the fur seal, so far as they can be ascertained 

 from residence on the Pribilofs, are well known, and it is not a naturalist who is 

 needed so much as the services of an honest man of high standing who will faithfully 

 count the dead pups upon each rookery after September 20. All sealing in Bering 

 Sea should be suspended, and it would be a simple matter to determine from the 

 count made in September by representatives of the United States and Great Britain 

 in concert (this is important) whether the enormous numbers of dead pups counted 

 last year is a normal, annual occurrence unaffected by the frightful slaughter of 

 mothers in Bering Sea. There is still ample time to save the terrible waste of seal 

 life which has occurred during the past two summers that waste which has destroyed 

 alike the Alaskan and Russian seal herd. 

 Very respectfully, 



J. STANLEY-BROWN. 



Hon. C. S. HAMLIN, 



Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. 



APRIL 25, 1896. 



SIR: I have made inquiries of Mr. J. Stanley-Brown, superintendent 

 of the North American Commercial Company, who informs me that the 

 company's steamer Homer will sail from San Francisco between the 15th 

 and 20th of May for the islands. The steamship is a commodious one, 

 having forty staterooms, and there will be no trouble in accommodating 

 the representatives of the British Government. The steamer will reach 

 Unalaska probably about June 3, and continuing its course, will reach 

 the islands about July 7. The whole seal herd will not be on the 

 islands before July 10, and it would not be practicable, therefore, to 

 undertake to count the number of seals before that date, and this 

 counting would take probably ten days. It would be, therefore, nearly 



