Evening star., 1926-10-19

Uncle Sam has proved to be a good
animal breeder, so far as Alaskan
seals demonstrate, for starting In
1911, with a remnant Of only $4,000
seals, where a decade or so previous
there had been from 100000 to
4. 900 900, he has caused the herd TO
so increase and multiply that now
there are 761,201 domiciled on the
little Pribilof Islands, the number
doubling in the last decade. Japan is
complaining that they break bounds
and eat up her fish. So Japan wants
to revise the international treaty OF
1911, which stopped pelagic sealing,
as agreed to by the United States,
Great Britain, Russia and Japan.
Il II 4 y
Under the terms of the 1911 treaty,
oil pelagic sealing-killing of seals
while they were in the ocean. away
from their breeding haunts on the
Pribilof Islands-was forbidden, and
the United States, in compensation,
agreed to pay to Japan and to Great
Britain, each, Is per cent of all skins
taken on the islands during the term
Of the treaty.
It has been hinted, more or less Of
ficially, that Japan may be more In
terested in an increase Of that per-
centage than in reviving the pelagic
butchery of seals, which had come
so near their determination while no
effective control had been exercised.
Oceanographers are decidedly skep-
tical of the charge that Alaskan seals
are poaehing upon Japanese fish, for
our seals, as a rule, do not cross the
ocean, but upon leaving the Pribilof
Islands in August swing around a
great circle toward Lower California,
thence up the coastal waters during
the Winter, arriving back on the
Pribilof Islands in May.
In fable, the wolf complained that
the fierce lamb, downstream, was
muddying the waters, so that he-the
wolf-could not drink.
Seals are almost Human in many OF
their traits and habits Ninety per
cent Of the seals Of the world live and
breed upon the Pribilof Islands-St.
Paul and ST. George and two smaller
islands-located Just north of Alaska
Peninsula. They feed in the ocean,
and each individual returns each year
to it's identical spot on the islands.
About May /, the seal bulls arrive
upon the islands, and take up their
strategic positions, where they await
the later arrival of the females. Each
bull has there pre-empted a particular
rock or residence, and as the "cows''
arrive, there is a great scramble to
capture them for their respective
harems. The strongest bulls accumu
late harems Of from 20 to 100 cows
and from that time the bulls never
leave their positions Of vantage, lest
some rival steal their families. The
bulls live three to four months upon
those barren rocks, without eating OF
| drinking, because of their jealousies
over their respective haremS. They
subsist upon their own blubber, until,
toward the end of the season, a husky
bull becomes greatly emaciated and
comparatively feeble.
Each COW gives birth to one pup
which she nurtures and feeds
throughout the Summer. There may
be 40, 1000 or $4,000 such pups upon one
promontory, but the mothers swim
out 200 or 800 miles for their owr
feed, and, upon returning. each mother
finds her own pup and suckles it
No mistake as to the Identification o1
her pup has ever been known.
X X X
Seals also inhabit islands in the sub
antarctic, and in the Southern Pacific
region, including Juan Fernandez
where Robinson Crusoe lived, though
his biographer never discovered wha,
a prize island he had, for Robinson
Crusoe never wore a sealskin over
coat-which proves that the whole
story was fiction.
A company of hunters found seal Sc
abundant upon little island south OF
| Cape Horn that they slaughtered in
one season 256, 900 of them. The next
year they found that they had killed
| the source OF the golden egg," fol
they then found only $4,000 SEALS II