charge of exces The alleged excessive killing of male seals Foundation of must rest entirely on the proposition, which the sive killing. Report endeavors to establish, that, by means of this license to slaughter 100,000 young males on the Islands, the breeding males have become so depleted as to be unable to fertilize the females, thus creating a decrease in the birth rate sufficient to account for the present condition of the Alaskan seal herd. To establish this, the Commissioners refer, among other things, to the report to the Treasury Department in 1875 of Captain Charles Bryant. This official did, as Captain Bryant stated in the Report (Sec. 678), advise the Secre- the Commissiontary of the Treasury, in view of his observations, to reduce the number of the quota to 85,000 skins; but the true reason of this recommendation is obscured in the Report by a collection of quotations from various writings, of which he is the author, and by placing an erroneous interpretation on his language. as a witness for ers. The reasons for his report of 1875 are clearly Reasons for his shown by an examination of his testimony before a committee of the House of Representatives in 1876. Captain Bryant there makes the following statement: "In the season of 1868, before the prohibitory law was passed and enforced, numerous parties sealed on the Islands at will and took about two hundred and fifty thousand seals. report. report. Reasons for his They killed mostly all the product of 1866-67. In making our calculations for breeding seals we did not take that loss into consideration, so that in 1872-73, when the crop of 1866-'67 would have matured, we were a little short. These seals had been killed. For that reason, to render the matter doubly sure, I recommended to the Secretary a diminution of 15,000 seals for the ten years ensuing. I do not, however, wish to be understood as saying that the seals are all decreasing that the proportionate number of male seals of the proper age to take is decreasing. "Q. The females are increasing? "A. Yes, sir; and consequently the number of pups produced annually."1 In 1872 the seals taken were principally four and six years old and some of seven years old were killed (Sec. 812). This was drawing from the same class of seals killed in 1868,2 which would, had they been spared, have appeared on the rookeries as breeders in 1873 and the years thereafter. The following year (1873) the class of skins preferred were "three-year-olds" (Sec. 813), or those born in 1870; the so-called "crops" of 1869 and 1870 would not have been fit to go on 1 Ho. Rep., 44th Cong., 1st Sess., Rept. No. 623, p. 99. report. the breeding grounds till 1875 or 1876, which Reasons for his would correspond with Captain Bryant's statement that the decrease in male life ceased in 1876 and breeding male seals began to increase to such an extent in 1877 that he affirmed that in two years (1879) the loss would be made good (Sec. 679). This is further and fully explained by the same witness in his deposition appended to the Case of the United States.1 dence. The evidence presented in the Report, which, Divisions of evitreats of the period from 1870 to 1880, consists (1) of statements to the effect that 100,000 or more skins could not be taken on the Islands without depleting the herd, and (2) of other statements or conclusions to the effect that the male seals, both breeding and nonbreeding, had decreased during the first decade of the lease of 1870. the first division. As to the first statements mentioned, it is in- Irrelevancy of sisted by the United States that it is entirely irrelevant how many seals were taken on the Islands annually, unless it can be shown that the number killed resulted in a diminution of the normal number of the seal herd, or at least the male portion of it. The so-called proof, however, on this point which the Report presents as statements as to to the Russian period of occupation is so mani 'Appendix to the Case of the United States, Vol. II, p. 7. Unfairness of Russian period. statements as to Unfairness as to festly unfair that attention should be directed to Russian period. its misleading character. The Commissioners state that from 1787 to 1806 the number of skins taken was 50,000 annually; from 1807 to 1816, 47,500; and from 1817 to 1866, 25,000. The desire is to suggest the inference that the killing of 50,000 was excessive, the Report giving as a secondary reason for the evident decrease the "nearly promiscuous slaughter (for the first part of this period) of seals of both sexes and all ages." (Sec. 40.) The United States contend that the "nearly promiscuous slaughter," mentioned as a secondary cause, was the principal cause, and that the expression "for the first part of this period" is intentionally indefinite, though it appears from the Report that the killing of females was not prohibited until 1847 (Sec. 37, p. 8). The Report states that in 1836 an exceptionally severe winter caused a great mortality among the seals, so that only 4,100 of all classes were observed on the rookeries (Sec. 800), which reduced the birth rate for a number of years and necessarily, also, the annual number of skins secured. The inclusion of this time of scarcity in all classes of seals in the period of 1834 to 1866 is most misleading es to the question of how many male seals can be taken when the rookeries are in their normal condition. killed from 1860 An examination of the Russian docu-. The numbers ments herewith submitted shows that from 1860 1865. to 1865, inclusive (when it may be assumed the rookeries had recovered from the mortality of 1836 and the slaughter of female seals prior to 1847), the annual quota ranged from 45,000 to 70,000 on St. Paul Island alone, and that the only reason why more were not taken was the plethoric condition of the Chinese, Russian, and American markets.1 Second division of evidence. The other class of statements or conclusions advanced, to show that the breeding and nonbreeding seals decreased during the ten years following the leasing of the Pribilof Islands in 1870, may be divided into three heads, namely, (1) an alleged increased proportion of females to breeding males, (2) an alleged recognition by the lessees of the decrease of male seals, and (3) alleged overdriving and resort to new areas to obtain the quota. The first allegation is Comparisons of based entirely on comparisons between the early 1890 irrelevant. years of the lease of 1870 and the last two or three years of the same (1889-1891). The United States insist that such comparisons are irrelevant, for, even if the breeding males were disproportionately few during the latter years, it 1 Post pp. 193-199. Bancroft's Alaska, p. 582: "In 1851, 30,000 could be killed annually at St. Paul Island alone, and in 1861 as many as 70,000, without fear of exhausting the supply." harems 1870 and |