APPENDIX TO COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 711 



Deposition of Gaptam George Scott. 



State of California, Gity and Gountij of San Francisco, s.s. 



Captain George Scott, of Alameda, California, havinj? been duly 

 sworn, deposes and swears: 



1. I live in Alameda, California, and am captain of the "Emma and 

 Lonisa," sealing-scliooner, and formerly of tLe "Lily L." I have been 

 sealinf? for fifteen years, also hunting for otter during that period, and 

 have hunted seals from Sau Francisco into the Behring Sea and across 

 to the Commander Islands and along the Japanese coast. 



2. I have hunted with rifle and shot-gun. With a rifle I would shoot 

 up to 150 yards, and with a shot-gun up to 30 yards. In putting the 

 loss from Avounded at 5 per cent. I place it at the extreme, and give 

 the advantage to the loss. We do not keep an actual tally of any loss 

 from wounded seals, but as it is a matter of dollars and cents to us — 

 every seal lost. — it therefore makes a deep impression when we lose one, 

 and for that reason I speak with a good deal of accuracy. 



3. When seals are travelling- they are mostly in schools, and a young 

 seal is most always on watch, and they are more wary and harder to 

 catch than when travelling alone or in couples. 



Sometimes these schools are mixed in sexes, and at others all of one 

 sex. On the Californian and Oregon coast the schools are composed 

 of old females and young seals of both sexes, and about Cape Flattery 

 they are joined by the older males. 



4. My take, in my experience, from Sau Francisco to Behring Sea, 

 along the coast, would run about half and half as regards the sexes, 

 and about two-thirds of the cows would be pregnant, and we get 

 quite a number each year of barren cows, though it is impossible now 

 to give actual figures. 



Some days in Behring Sea we would get forty seals, and they would 

 be all males; the next day they would, perhaps, be all females, and I 

 would put it at half and half. In Behring Sea for the most part the 

 cows killed are in milk, but I have killed many in which the milk was 

 just about dried, showing that the seal had lost the pup on the passage. 

 This has occun^ed in the month of June. I have killed these cows 500 

 and 600 miles from the Pribylofl' Islands, and I have also killed them 

 the same distance away and on the pup being cut out trom the mother 

 it cried, and would attempt to take nourishment, showing that the seal 

 could not possibly have reached the islands to pup. 



5. I do not see any difierence in the number of seals now than when 

 I began sealing, but from the number that hunt seals, judge that they 

 are becoming wary and hard to approach. 



6. I do not know of any vessels having been in Behring Sea this 

 year (1892) that were not warned away or seized, and had there been 

 any I should likely have known it. 



7. I have not noticed any difference in the quality of the skins caught 

 on the Asiatic and American sides. I think they are just the same. 

 In crossing from the American to the Asiatic coast I have noticed seals 

 every day more or less. Seals are found more or less plentiful on dif- 

 ferent coasts every year, and regulate their whereabouts by the food 

 supply, and I think that both the American and Eussian seals are 

 taken about the Equatorial Islands, and are there mingled together in 



the winter months. 



120 8. I have twice hunted on the Japanese coast with good suc- 



cess, my catch having averaged better than here. We start in 



January for that coast. I have found that the average j)rice of all seal, 



American, Eussian, and Jai)anese, run the same. 



