FUR SEALS OF BERING SEA 471 
eriminate slaughter. It is not necessary to look for other causes, this 
cause is more than sufficient. To return to our analogy, suppose the 
owner of a cattle range should allow the slaughter of 65 to 85 per cent. 
of his breeding cows with the consequent loss of their offspring. It 
would simply mean the ruin of the herd of cattle, and pelagic sealing 
has in like manner brought ruin on the fur-seal herd. 
This cause of decline was established for the government in 1898 
by a commission of scientific experts. It was pointed out that only by 
the establishment of an international game law for the high seas which 
should protect the female fur seal—in other words, the abolition of 
pelagic sealing—could the herd be preserved and restored. The prop- 
erty involved is a very important one. The fur-seal herd during the 
first twenty years of its ownership by the United States yielded to the 
government a revenue of $13,500,000, almost twice the sum paid for 
the Territory of Alaska. If the conditions of these twenty years held 
true for to-day—and they would remain true were it not for pelagic 
sealing—the herd would now be bringing to the government an annual 
income of $1,000,000. 
In the period of fourteen years since the exact relation of pelagic 
sealing to the reduced condition of the herd was demonstrated to our 
government, this wasteful and inhuman form of hunting has gone on 
season by season without interruption. A total of 200,000 gravid 


A Fur SEAL HAREM. 
