192 CAENIVORA. 



unbairing. The skins are placed by macbinery across 

 a fine edge of a board. Tbe fur is tben blown aside and 

 di\dded by a current of air, and a pair of small knives 

 descend, cutting the small hairs which stand upright. 

 The knives are then lifted up, the skin is moved on, and 

 the process is continued as before. This process, 

 although it renders the skin softer and more beautiful, 

 usually makes the fur thinner and less durable, and, in 

 unskilful hands, some skins were cut and injured by the 

 machine when first introduced. 



The waste edges or trimmings from the Seal-skins 

 are either used for the manufacture of caps of an inferior 

 quality, hundreds of scraps being used for one cap ; or 

 the fur is cut ofi' the edgings and made into felt. 



VICTOEIA OR XOETH-WEST FUE SEAL. 



CaUorlnnus ursinus. 



The Victoria Fur Seal, of which so much has been 

 heard of late years through the recent diplomatic 

 controversy about the close time for Fur Seals in the 

 Behring Sea, comes now under our notice. For some 

 years the American Government maintained that 

 Behring's was a closed sea, and in 1886 the British 

 schooners Carolina, Thornton, and Omvard, and the 

 American schooner St. Jago, were seized, and some of 

 the crew were imprisoned for thirty days for catching 

 Fur Seals. One seizure took place 500 miles west of 

 Alaska, another 60 miles. The Judge ruled that the 

 claim of the United States over the greater part of the 

 Behrmg Sea was acquired by treaty with Eussia. 



