Febeuaet 28, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



325 



TBE ADMIXISTBATION OF THE FVB 

 SEAL SERVICE 



The report of the House Committee on 

 Expenditures in the Department of Commerce 

 and Labor, on the administration of the fur 

 seal service, has been made public as House 

 Eeport, No. 1425, 62d Cong., 3d Ses. It con- 

 tains a majority report, signed by Representa- 

 tives Eothermel (chairman), McDermott, 

 Young and McGillicuddy ; a statement of 

 " views of the minority," and the minority 

 report, signed by Representatives MeGuire, 

 Madden and Patton. 



This committee, in the course of its investi- 

 gation, held numerous hearings extending 

 from May 31, 1911, to July 31, 1912. The 

 testimony heard comprises 1,013 pages, with 

 an appendix of correspondence and documents 

 numbering 1,232 pages. The majority report 

 is divided into 7 coimts, five of which have to 

 do with certain alleged harmful or unlawful 

 acts of the two leasing companies which we 

 need not now go into. They are ancient his- 

 tory, since the fur seal herd is now, and has 

 been since 1910, in sole charge of the govern- 

 ment. 



The sixth item in the report deals with the 

 period of government control, and states that 

 " in spite of the express prohibition of the 

 law, it is disclosed in the testimony that year- 

 ling and female seals have been killed by the 

 agents of the government in charge of the seal 

 islands." One looks in vain in the testimony 

 for any such evidence. On the other hand, the 

 testimony clearly shows that of the 13,500 

 skins taken in 1910 (of which 12,920 were sold 

 in London in December of that year), the sea- 

 son under particular consideration, only 90 

 were under the standard weight of the two- 

 year-old, as shown by the green weights taken 

 by the agents on the islands, and only 92, by 

 the salted weights of the London fur dealers. 

 With these possible exceptions, no yearling 

 animals were killed; and in the period from 

 1904 to 1911, in which the individual weights 

 of over 90,000 skins were taken, only 700 

 skins were underweight. These exceptions 

 may represent accidents or mistakes in judg- 

 ment, it being necessary for the clubber to 



judge the weight of the skin while the animal 

 is alive. It was, furthermore, not against the 

 law to kill yearlings; the prohibition in this 

 case was by departmental regulation. The 

 charge that females were killed depended 

 upon the alleged commingling of the sexes in 

 the yearling class. It is not a fact that the 

 yearling males and females commingle on land, 

 but this is not necessary to disprove the charge, 

 as yearlings are shown not to have been killed, 

 except in the few exceptional cases above noted. 



The charge of killing yearlings was in itself 

 a most insignificant one. Representative 

 Townsend, whose resolution brought on the 

 investigation, asserted in his opening address 

 that 30,000 such animals had been killed. Mr. 

 Henry W. Elliott, the complaining witness, 

 placed the number at 128,000. The total num- 

 ber of animals killed by the North American 

 Commercial Company during its twenty-year 

 period scarcely exceeded 300,000. It may be 

 noted that other testimony, by Mr. Alfred 

 Eraser, showed that in this very same period 

 more than a million seals had been killed at 

 sea, of which we know from other sources fully 

 80 per cent, were gravid or nursing females. 

 This fact together with all other facts relating 

 to the effect of pelagic sealing upon the fur 

 seal herd is ignored in the majority report. 



Item 7 of the majority statement recites 

 how " the testimony taken before the com- 

 mittee was the basis in large measure of the 

 action of Congress . . . which establishes a 

 closed term of five years ... to all commer- 

 cial killing of seals." The testimony nowhere 

 discloses any valid reason for the suspension 

 of co mm ercial sealing. On the contrary, the 

 testimony contains the positive assertions of 

 such authorities as Dr. D. S. Jordan, of Stan- 

 ford University; Dr. L. Stejneger, of the 

 Smithsonian Institution; Dr. C. H. Merriam, 

 late of the U. S. Biological Survey; Dr. E. A. 

 Lucas, of the American Museum of Natural 

 History; Dr. C. H. Townsend, of the New 

 York Aquarium, and others, all of whom have 

 visited the fur seal islands in recent years and 

 made studies of the animals, to the effect that 

 such suspension is not only not necessary, but 



