Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/92

80, such as have long been available for men, it would have been easy to calculate just what number of males of fixed ages might be killed annually without interference with the reproductive power of the herd, and computations of this character were made and submitted by the American commissioners, based upon the best available data, showing that the average number taken upon the Pribilof Islands during the past twenty years could not have been greatly in excess of safety.

But in sealing at sea discrimination as to sex is impossible. It was affirmed that by far the greater number of seals killed at sea were females, an assumption justified by an examination of the skins of a large number of seals taken from the water, as well as by other evidence not less conclusive, though more circumstantial. Indeed, the British commissioners admitted that at least one half of those killed at sea were females, making it extremely difficult to understand how they could argue themselves into the belief that the herd could ever reach its maximum dimensions while pelagic sealing existed, or why the growth of the latter would not necessarily lead to its practical extermination. Finally, it was submitted that if the truth of these two propositions was agreed upon it was impossible to avoid the following conclusions: That the restoration of the sealing industry to its normal condition, so far as relates to the Pribilof Islands, requires the entire cessation of killing, both on the islands and at sea, for a period of years not less than five, and to be extended if competent examination of the rookeries so indicated. When killing was resumed it should be restricted to selective killing on land, under the most rigid inspection, and pelagic sealing should be perpetually prohibited.

In submitting these propositions as the logical outcome of the facts as determined, the American commissioners were adhering to both the letter and spirit of the convention, in which they were directed to investigate and report upon "the measures necessary for the proper protection and preservation" of seal life. They did not believe it to be their duty to consider how such measures would affect the interests, business or political, of the subjects of either or any nation. They believed with Lord Salisbury that it was "equally to the interests of all the Governments concerned in the sealing industry that it should be protected from serious risks of extinction," and that the discussion of compensatory measures, equivalent adjustments, methods of enforcement, etc., was not the duty of a commission organized to ascertain facts and conditions, determine causes, and suggest remedies. They also fully realized that they were tolerably certain to be thought ingenious rather than ingenuous, because the remedies which they suggested were apparently