APPENDIX TO COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 627 



Sea throug^h the 172nd Pass, and botli outside and inside saw seals. 1 

 do not know wlietlier these seals were going to the Commander Islands 

 or to the Pribyloff Islands, or whether they had come from either of 

 those islands. 



5. I liave often seen seals in schools, especially south of Cape Flat- 

 tery, bnt it is impossible to get at them there. I once saw a string of 

 seals, porpoises, and whales, on a calm day, that took more than two 

 hours to pass. This body of animals was about CO yards wide. I went 

 right among them, but only got three. In the same time I would have 

 got more seals had they been sleeping or resting. 



6. I have noticed that seals are getting wilder all the time, and it is 

 much harder to get them now than it was when I first went hunting. 

 There are more on the look-out, and when two or three are together 



there is always one on the look out, even when seals are sleeping 

 66 they seem to be on the alert and start ofiF. I have seen twenty 



seals sleeping and get none of them, they would not let me near 

 them. Cows with young are wilder than others ; the young seals are 

 more easily got at. 



7. I saw On the coast this year as many seals as I ever saw before, 

 and a good many more than I have seen most years. 



8. The teats of a seal are not easily noticed, and I don't know that 

 males have them, but even when I knew the seal was a female it was 

 hard to see the teats often. 



9. I never saw seals cohabiting in the water, but have talked with 

 men who have seen them, and I have seen males and females playing 

 together, and have shot both of them ; they are easier to get when a 

 male and female are together. 



10. Every year that we went into Behring Sea we got barren cows — 

 by ''barren" cows, I mean ones that have no milk in their breasts and, 

 of course, no pup. 



11. I have read over everything herein written, and declare that it is 

 all true, and that there is nothing else I wish taken down. 



And I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the 

 same to be true, and by vii'tue of "The Act respecting Extra- Judicial 

 Oaths." 



(Signed) James Shields. 



Subscribed and declared by the said James Shields before me, a 

 Notary Public duly commissioned, and residing and practising at the 

 city of Victoria, in the Province of British Columbia, this 21st day of 

 October, A. D. 1892. 



[seal.] (Signed) Arthur L. Belyea, 



A Notary Public in and for the Province of British Columbia. 



Declaration of George F, French. 



Dominion of Canada, 



Province of British Columbia^ City of Victoria, 



I, George F. French, of the city of Victoria, in the Province of 

 British Columbia, seal-hunter, do solemnly declare: 



1. That I have been seal-hunting three years — one year out of San 

 Francisco on the schooner "Hamilton Lewis," and two years out of 

 Victoria— in 1891 and 1892— on the "City of San Biego." All three 

 were American registered vessels, and I am a citizen of the United 

 States. 



