The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-10-05

With Half tho V orld to Choose From
 They stick (, Two Little Islands.
 The fur seal dts name should be fur ry seal lion) Is the most celebrated of all our fur-bearers. and the United States government has been as active in protecting 1t from destruction as It was indifferent to the fate of the buff falo millions. If our great information al dispute with England and Canada over the fur seal had arisen seventy years ago, before the days of peaceful arbitration, there would surely have been a war over 1t. Nor Is our interest in our fur seal to be wondered at when We stop to consider that from 1870 to 1890 our national treasury received $6,- GOO, coo from the Alaska Commercial Go. as royalty on the animals killed (six- sevenths of the purchase price of Alas ka). When to this we add the amount received in q twenty per cent import duty on the dressed skins as they came back to us from the English dyers, the total revenue derived from the fur seal in twenty years amounts to the enor- nous sum of $S,50O,O00. Such an animal was worth saving from destruction. No other quadruped ever became such a bone of contention between two great nations for long period, the discus sion winding up with high and mighty conference of arbitration.
 As usual, the whole trouble arose through the greatness of a few ire sponsible and lawless individuals The sealers of the Pacific coast insisted upon taking fur seals by shooting them in the open sea, by which wasteful pro- cess seven were lost for every three se- cured. But if 1t were not for the loss of money revenue derived from this animal, 1t is quite certain the govern ment would have allowed the wasteful slaughter to go on until the last seal was dead.
 The fur seal is not a true seal by any means, but a sea lion, with naked, pad dle-shaped fippers and tiny ears. It is about two-thirds the size of the Zalo- phus, and is therefore the smalles
 member of the sea-lion family. MT. FL liott gives the average length of the full-grown male animal as six feet from nose to tail, and weight from $50 to 300 pounds. The average length of the
 adult female is a trifle over four feet, and weight from 62 to 75 pounds. When
 dry, the coat is of dark, steel-gray
 color, and only the coarse, stiff outer
 hair is visible. Underneath this lies a
 dense coat of very fine and soft light
 brown fur in which lies all the value of
 the skin. In preparing the pelt the coarse outer hair is entirely removed, and the underlying fur is dyed shiny,
 lustrous black, and sheared down very evenly. For some mysterious reason we, the people of Yankee ingenuity
 are actually unable to dye seal fur sue cessfully, and this work is from sheer necessity sent to England. When it comes back there is high rate of duty to pay, which in addition to the origi-
 nal royalty of S1O.22 paid to the gov ernment by the North American Con-
 mercial Co. for every skin taken. the very long bill of transportation charges,
 labor and profits all along the line, from the back of the seal to that of the fortunate wearer, accounts for the price of from S25O to $500 on seal-skin cloak. In it's habits the fur seal is remark able creature With three thousand
 miles of coast to land upon if it chose, this strange and perverse animal now refuses to set flipper upon any portion of the whole North American conti- nent, island or mainland, save the two little dots of land in Boring sea, St. Paul and St. George Islands, known to the world collectively as the Pribilof Islands. St. Paul is seven miles by fourteen, and St. George is only five and
 half by thirteen.
 And yet, when MT. Elliott made his careful and elaborate survey of all the
 "rookeries," or herding-grounds on those islands, in July, 1873, and labo- riously calculated the number of their fin-footed inhabitants, he found there the astonishing number of 3,193, APO ful seals. Like sheep in pen, they actll- ally crowded one another on the sloping shores of sand, or water-worn bould- CTS, or tables of slaty-blue basalt Each burly old male appears giant beside the females and young males ! gathered around him.-W. T. Horna' day in the St. Nicholas for October.