160 WILD LIFE PROTECTION FUND 



skins, the importance of the salvaged fur-seal herd will be 

 realized. If we figure it out on a basis of the sale of Febru- 

 ary 2, 1920 at St. Louis, the answer is $14,098,000 per year, 

 75 per cent of which will belong to the United States. 



Under the terms of our treaty with England and Japan 

 we are dividing net proceeds with those two partner nations, 

 who now help us to preserve the fur seals when at sea, on 

 the perfectly fair basis of 15 per cent to Japan and 10 per 

 cent to England. During the five-year closed season we 

 annually paid to each of those two nations the sum of 

 $10,000. 



In its habits the fur seal — which in reality is not at all 

 a true seal, but a fur-coated sea-lion — is one of the most 

 remarkable of all sea-going mammals. There are writers 

 who still insist that fur seals can be managed by man just 

 as a farmer manages his herds of breeding cattle and horses. 

 As a matter of fact, the fur seal is hopelessly wild and 

 untamable, and the only "management" that man can be- 

 stow upon the free animal is in terms of slaughter. He 

 can drive it and kill it by artificial or by natural selection, 

 but that is absolutely all. The fur seal migrates, returns, 

 breeds and feeds solely in accordance with its own erratic 

 and persistent will, and man's so-called "management" lies 

 solely in the use of the seal-killer's club and the skinning- 

 knife. 



