Man and Nature 433 



Sealing on the islands is restricted to the " bachelor" herd, 

 the number taken each year being determined by the govern- 

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

 of native drivers to the killing pens where they are slaughtered 

 by a blow on the head with a club. The skins are then 

 removed and packed in salt for shipment to market. 



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

 rapidly diminished to about one-tenth of its original size. 

 It was simply a repetition of ''watching the spigot" while 

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



A SEAL EOOKERY ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS, ALASKA 

 Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries. 



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 waters, 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 



