Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/93

Rh and perhaps in the end really in the interests of the country they represented, although, in their judgment, in the end equally in the interests of the great nation represented by their colleagues.

A lengthy discussion followed this presentation, filling much of the time of the seventeen sessions of the conference, which extended through February and a part of the first week in March, 1892. The British commissioners were unwilling to admit that pelagic sealing was the main or even a principal cause of the diminution of seal life, for which they argued that killing on the islands was most largely responsible. It was even asserted that if taking on the islands was entirely discontinued all the pelagic sealing that could or ever would be carried on in Bering Sea and the North Pacific would never lead to the commercial extinction of the seal herd. Such an assertion made necessary others of an equally extraordinary character, such as that the killing of females at sea to the extent of furnishing one half of the pelagic catch, as they were compelled to admit, should be considered as a desirable and wholesome treatment of the herd, not tending in any way to reduce the total available product. They affirmed that the percentage of seals lost in pelagic sealing was very small, being much less than that by improper killing on the islands. They accounted for the very large excess of skins of females in the pelagic catch by declaring that during the past few years frequent raids upon the islands had been made, in which crews of sealing vessels descended upon the breeding rookeries at night and captured the females in large numbers. The small size of the islands and the presence of numerous guards near the principal rookeries rendered such an assumption practically impossible, and, although occasional raids have occurred, the poachers have always preferred the hauling grounds of the male seals, whose skins are more valuable than those of the females. It was generally believed by residents of the islands and Government inspectors that the number of skins obtained by this kind of poaching was extremely small. The presence of large numbers of dead "pups" or young seals, which was attributed by the American commissioners to starvation owing to the death of their mothers at the hands of pelagic sealers, was charged by the British commissioners to other causes, some form of disease or epidemic being the favorite.

Differences so radical as to causes were naturally accompanied by equally radical differences as to remedies. On the one hand, it was contended that as pelagic sealing was in the largest measure responsible for the evil, its entire suppression ought to be recommended; on the other, that pelagic sealing had comparatively little to do with it, and that severe restriction on the number killed on the islands, with perhaps a small closed area surrounding each, would