SEALSKINS AND SEAL FISHERIES. 
The animal population which has hitherto 
supplied us with the luxury of sealskins is rap- 
idly being exterminated, says a writer in the 
Glasgow Herald, and it is quite within the 
bounds of possibility that our descendents will 
be unable to procure a sight of the once plenti- 
ful material anywhere but in natural history 
museums. The scarcity of sealskins is an inev- 
itable result of the over-fishing procedure, 
which seems to attend well nigh every human 
enterprise nowadays. Sealskins, as articles of 
commerce, it may first of all be mentioned, do 
not all belong to one and the same category, 
and this for the plain reason that there are seals 
and seals. Every one knows the common seals 
which inhabit the waters round our own coasts. 
Creatures, these, possessing dog-like heads, 
mild eyes, and a body which tapers toward its 
extremity, while the limbs number four and are 
converted into swimming paddles. The front 
paddles are short and the hinder ones, which 
are connected with the short tail by a fold of 
skin, are stretched out behind. The ordinary 
seal is but a clumsy body on land. It wriggles 
and rolls with evident helplessness when placed 
on the shore. In the water, however, the 
whole aspect ofeaffairs is altered. It is active, 
agile and graceful in its proper habitat. Its 
body is modelled on lines which fit it for rapid 
progression through the waves. The hinder 
part of the seal’s body, together with the back 
limbs or flippers, constitute a kind of screw 
propellor. Moved by the powerful muscles of 
the trunk, it glides through the water, while 
the front flippers serve to steer the animal in its 
evolutions. These seals, together with their 
neighbors which give us sealskins, belong to 
the carnivorous order of quadrupeds. They 
share many characters in common with the 
lions, tigers, bears, dogs and like animals; 
their own and special features consisting in 
their adaptation to a marine life. Naturally. 
like whales, they have to ascend to the surface 
in order tobreathe. Asa primal feature in con- 
nection with the history of the ordinary seals 
may be mentioned the fact that they possess a 
very wide distribution, both in temperate and 
arctic latitudes. 
The seals from which the sealskins of com- 
merce are obtained present certain characters, 
on the other hand, of equally distinctive and 
prominent kind. To begin with, they are often 
named eared seals, from the fact that, unlike- 
the common seals, they possess a small and ru- 
dimentary outside ear. In their general ap- 
pearance, also, the eared seals are different 
from the common seals. They are often named 
sea-lions from the fact that the head and face: 
are somewhat leonine in aspect, and because: 
some of them at least possess a well-developed 
mane. The sea-lion’s head is thus set upon a 
very distinct neck, which is practically unrec- 
ognizable in the common seal. The hind quar-- 
ters, again, terminate more abruptly than in 
the latter. The front flippers are much more: 
distinctly separated from the body than is the 
case with our native seals; so that, as far as 
movements either on land or water are con- 
cerned, these members are more efficient in- 
struments than are the corresponding append- 
ages in the ordinary seals. Then, also, the: 
hind legs or flippers of the sea-lions are not di- 
rected straight backward, as in the seals, but 
are placed somewhat outward and forward. 
These members, in fact, although they serve all 
the purposes of swimming paddles, yet far more- 
effectively act as true limbs than is the case in 
the seal tribe. 
In swimming the sea lion uses both pairs ot 
limbs, while on land it is by no means the awk- 
ward animal that the ordinary seal appears to 
be. Indeed, on the ground the sea lion is ex- 
tremely active. It can run almost as fast as a 
human being, and it certainly climbs over its. 
rocky ledges and steps with the uttermost ease. 
Such is the animal from which the sealskin ot 
commerce ‘is obtained, regarded from a zoélo- 
gical point of view. It was the French natu- 
ralist Péron who in 1816 gave reasons for sepa- 
rating the ordinary seals from the sealskin seals 
or sea lions, which had before that time been 
classified with the common members of the 
