Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/398

394 found only in one small herd, which hauls out in the spring and fall on the islets off Port Heiden, on the Alaska Peninsula.

It is shocking to contemplate the indifference with which the civilized world has witnessed, nay, not only witnessed but encouraged the slaughter, almost to the point of extinction, of highly organized animals evidencing traits of affection and devotion which would do honor to human beings. Everywhere, in every sea, it is the same story, destroy! destroy! destroy! What more pathetic sight in the whole range of man's ruthless destruction than the thousands of nursing fur seals starving and dead on the shores of the Pacific islands as a result of the inhuman butchery of their nurture-seeking mothers in the waters of Bering Sea and the North Pacific. At the present rate of decrease the day is not far distant when they will have become as extinct as the buffalo of the American prairies.

Pet it not be understood that our sympathy for the highly organized creatures of the sea would withhold them from industrial use. The slaughter of animals under proper safeguards, whether they be in the seas or under domestic care, does not in itself constitute needless cruelty, for the end of every individual, beast or human, is pathetic, whether it result from sudden accident or through the waste of years. When this slaughter is so conducted that it is conservative utilization, with due care for the welfare and perpetuation of the species as a whole, it is but the most intelligent application of nature's wisest law of the survival of the fittest. The preservation which we would extend to these animals is largely for the purpose of their greater use. We would surround them with such protection and take them only under such conditions as would tend to increase their numbers and thus make them of far greater value to the hardy fishermen whose industry has won renown in all ages. It is hoped that the wide public interest attracted to the preservation of our natural resources will result in preventing the now imminent extermination of these species, whose zoologic and philosophic worth far exceeds their economic value.

It is beyond the limits of this paper to outline the proper direction of the efforts to preserve these resources. But in view of the fact that the fisheries on the high seas represent the greatest economic resource which the nations of the world hold in common for their joint use, it seems that there might be wisdom in a general treaty or international union for their consideration. Already there are several treaties of this nature with special international offices for the purpose of satisfying economic and other nonpolitical interests, such as the Universal Postal Union, established in 1874, the Union for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1883, and the Union for the Protection of Works of Literature and Art in 1886. More closely allied to our subject is the convention in behalf of the preservation of wild animals,