APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
tion of enormous quanties of nutritious food which should be utilized 
as a means of supporting the lives of the millions of people in these 
United States. 
The Chamber of Commerce consider that the order of the Govern- 
ment by Act of Congress closing the Behring’s Sea is an Act not for 
the benefit of the people to secure them a cheap article of food, but 
is for the sole benefit of a simple monopoly, to enable them to supply 
articles of luxury for the fashionable clothing of the rich. 
We believe this Act of Congress to be a species of class legislation 
for the benefit of the wealthy few, and as such is opposed to the prin- 
ciples of sound public policy, and we protest against its further 
continuance. 
* * * * * 
James G. Swan. 
In reply to a communication received by me from the Committee on 
Relations with Canada, under date of the 4th April, 1889, inviting 
information from me on the general subject of their investigations, 
and especially to the fisheries of the Pacific coast, I have the honour 
to submit the following: 
On the 26th November, 1879, Professor Spencer F. Baird wrote me 
from Washington: ‘‘I should be very glad to have you undertake 
the work of collecting the fishery statistics for Puget Sound. Your 
Report may be as you choose to make it, particular attention being 
paid of course to the statistics of capture and yield. . . . Of 
course, I should wish you to take up the local seal fisheries as well as 
the others.” Acting upon this invitation, I prepared and forwarded 
to Professor Baird a Report on the fur-seal fishery off the entrance to 
the Strait of Fuca and west coast of Washington Territory, which 
was sent from Neah Bay to him by mail on the 20th July, 1880; also 
a paper on the food fishes of Capé Flattery, Washington Territory, 
September 1880, and an exhaustive monograph of the halibut fishery 
of Cape Flattery and Puget Sound, under date of the 20th October, 
1880. 
On the 16th November, 1880, I received at Neah Bay a letter from 
Professor G. Brown Goode, dated Washington, 29th October, 1880, in 
which he says: ‘* Your Report on fur seal fishery is at hand, and is of 
great importance to us. I am very much surprised at the extent of 
the business in your district.” This Report was attacked in a most 
virulent manner by Mr. Henry W. Elliott, who, like myseli, had been 
employed by the Smithsonian Institution to make investigations 
72 on the habits of the fur-seals. Mr. Elliott, in his Report on the 
seals of the Pribylov Islands, says the pups of the fur-seal cannot 
swim, but will sink like a stone if thrown into the water. I showed 
that the pups of the fur-seal at Cape Flattery do swim as soon as born, 
and adduced proof to show that in this respect the seals of Cape Flat- 
tery differ from those of Behring’s Sea. This statement of mine was 
in direct opposition to the statements of Mr. Elliott, and constantly 
reiterated by the Alaska Commercial Company for the past twenty 
years, that all the seals of the North Pacific go to Behring’s Sea, and 
congregate principally on the Pribylov Islands. The remarks of Mr. 
Elliott, which can be found in ‘‘A Monograph of the Seal Islands of 
Alaska,” a special Bulletin No. 176 of the United States Fish Commis- 
sion, 1882, p. 166, were so personally offensive to me that I remon- 
strated with Professor Baird for allowing the objectionable paragraph 
to be published, and by his request I prepared another paper on the 
fur-seal, which was published in the Bulletin of the United States 
Fish Commission, 1885, vol. iii, pp. 201 to 207, in which I proved by 
various witnesses, Government officers, masters of sealing-vessels, 
white traders, and Indians that I was correct in my assertions con- 
tained in my Report of 1880 above referred to. 
These Reports of mine, although published by the Government, 
seem for some reason to be systematically kept out of sight whenever 
information regarding seals and the fur-seal fishery is desired by 
Members of Congress. 
The arguments and assertions of the Alaska Commercial Company 
that the fur-seals all go to the Pribyloyv Islands, and would be exter- 
minated if that Company did not have the care and protection of 
them, would easily be disproved if both sides of the argument could 
be heard and the real facts made known. 
661 
Ibid, p. 268. 
