Part 11

To any one who is at all familiar with the conspicuous part which the theories of close killing, and especially overdriving, played in the British contention before the Paris Tribunal of Arbitration, this full and frank vindication comes as a refreshing surprise. That it should be agreed to by British scientific experts ought to revive even Dr. Mendenhall's faith. It is true that the statement is carefully limited to the seasons under observation, but neither the principle nor the methods of land killing have been altered within the past half century except in so far as they have been improved. It was an absurd and foolish theory which ascribed to the treatment of the non-breeding and superfluous male life of a herd of polygamous animals responsibility for the decline of its breeding stock, but it served a purpose useful to Canadian interests before the Paris tribunal. It is now forever eliminated from the fur-seal question.

10. The pelagic industry is conducted in an orderly manner, and in a spirit of acquiescence in the limitations imposed by law.

This statement is true, though wholly irrelevant to the question of the efficiency of the regulations themselves. Moreover, it stands as an implied impeachment of the active and efficient patrol fleet constantly maintained by the United States and Great Britain for the enforcement of the regulations governing the pelagic industry. For example, there were in 1896 five American and three British vessels engaged in active patrol of the waters of Bering Sea. One would think it a foregone conclusion that the pelagic industry should be law-abiding, whether of its own volition or not. In addition to all this, however, the regulations are as admirably suited to the needs of the pelagic sealer as if he had himself prepared them. There is, therefore, no reasonable incentive to violate them. Viewed in this light, this statement seems ludicrous, but it has a justification not evident at first sight.

The British experts demanded this statement as a balm for the wounded feelings of the pelagic sealer, and, such being the fact, the American commissioners assumed that it could do no harm to place it on record that he has conformed to the requirements of the law. But from the American point of view this paragraph has a wider and deeper meaning. We have seen in the opening paragraph that the decline in the herd has been continuous and uninterrupted during the period of the Paris regulations. It is admitted in paragraph 8 that the decrease for this same period has been a "notable" one. The rate is specified in paragraph 7 as from "nine to twelve per cent" during two years when the regulations were rigidly enforced. It only requires the climax of paragraph 10, asserting the perfect observance of the regulations, to complete their condemnation.

11. Pelagic sealing involves the killing of males and females alike, without discrimination and in proportion as the two sexes coexist in the sea. The reduction of the males effected on the islands causes an enhanced proportion of females to be found in the pelagic catch; hence this proportion, if it vary from no other cause, varies at least with the catch on the islands. In 1895 Mr. A. B. Alexander, on behalf of the Government of the United States, found 62.3 per cent of females in the catch of the Dora Sieward in Bering Sea; and in 1896 Mr. Andrew Halkett, on behalf of the Canadian Government, found 84.2 per cent in the catch of the same schooner in the same sea. There are no doubt instances, especially in the season of migration and in the course of the migrating herds, of catches containing a different proportion of the two sexes.

There are two ways and two alone whereby killing by man affects the fur-seal herd--namely, killing on land and killing at sea. Land killing has been vindicated in paragraph 9. We have here the necessary condemnation of pelagic killing expressed in equally full and frank terms. Land killing takes only males and leaves an adequate supply of bulls for breeding purposes; pelagic killing takes males and females alike, the latter sex constituting 62 to 84 out of every 100 killed.

It is not a vital matter that the female sex should be found to predominate in the pelagic catch, except in so far as it proves the falsity of the returns made so persistently by the Canadian sealing captain that the sexes are taken in virtually equal proportion at sea. The essential thing is that females are killed at all. That three fourths of all the animals taken at sea (during one season 140,000 animals were so taken) are of this sex only emphasizes the destructive nature of this industry.

12. The large proportion of females in the pelagic catch includes not only adult females that are both nursing and pregnant, but also young seals that are not pregnant and others that have not yet brought forth young, with such also as have recently lost their young through the various causes of natural mortality.

This statement is put in the mildest possible form out of consideration for the old-time British contentions that the breeding females did not leave the islands while their young were dependent upon them, and that those taken at sea were "barren." The investigations of 1896 and 1897 proved conclusively that every female of two years old and over taken at sea was pregnant, and that those over two years of age when taken in Bering Sea were in addition nursing, having dependent pups on the islands. The manner of statement seems to imply an equality in importance between "young" seals and "adults." As females are never killed on land, they are naturally of all ages when found at sea, and the young animals (yearlings and two-year-olds) are necessarily vastly in the minority.

13. The polygamous habit of the animal, coupled with an equal birth rate of the two sexes, permits a large number of males to be removed with impunity from the herd, while, as with other animals, any similar abstraction of females checks or lessens the herd's increase, or, when carried further, brings about an actual diminution of the herd. It is equally plain that a certain number of females may be killed without involving the actual diminution of the herd, if the number killed does not exceed the annual increment of the breeding herd, taking into consideration the annual losses by death through old age and through incidents of the sea.

This paragraph is really supplementary to 9 and 11. Neither the methods nor yet the principle of land killing are at fault. The animal being polygamous, a part of its male life can be removed with impunity. On the other hand, the killing of females leads to disastrous results.

The concluding sentence is a concession to diplomacy. It is true that a certain number of females may be killed without producing actual diminution. If pelagic sealing were stopped to-day the herd would naturally begin to increase. The measure of its increase would be the difference between the natural loss of adult breeders through old age and incidents of the sea, on the one hand, and the yearly accession of young breeders to bear their first pups, on the other. We can closely estimate the latter factor. It was equal, for example, to the quota of 20,000 in 1897, or sixteen and two thirds per cent of the birth rate. The quota was composed of males of approximately three years, and we may assume that a like number of three-year-old females entered the rookeries for the first time in the same season. We have then a gross gain to the breeding herd of sixteen and two thirds per cent.

We have no means of exact estimate for the loss of adult females because we do not know the period of life in the female. If, however, we estimate it at thirteen years, which seems to be a conservative figure, the animal would have ten years of breeding life. Then, from old age alone, ten per cent of the adult breeding females must die annually. This leaves a net gain of six and two thirds per cent with accidental factors unaccounted for. The killing of females which does not produce actual diminution must come well within this margin of six and two thirds per cent. It only remains to be stated that the pelagic catch of 1897, which was the smallest on record since 1884, exceeded fourteen per cent.

14. While, whether from a consideration of the birth rate or from an inspection of the visible effects, it is manifest that the take of females in recent years has been so far in excess of the natural increment as to lead to the reduction of the herd in the degree related above, yet the ratio of the pelagic catch of one year to that of the following has fallen off more rapidly than the ratio of the breeding herd of one year to the breeding herd of the next.

This paragraph corrects possible erroneous implications which might be drawn from the truism in the preceding paragraph. A certain number of females may be taken, etc., but so many in excess of the safety limit have been taken that the herd has been reduced "in the degree related above"--that is, for 1896-'97, nine to twelve per cent, and for 1884-'97, fifty to eighty per cent.

Dr. Mendenhall said: "It will be impossible to know absolutely which group of scientific experts was right (in 1892) in regard to pelagic sealing." The admission made in this paragraph, taken together with other admissions made in paragraphs 11 and 12, effectually disproves this prediction. It ought to be a source of gratification to Dr. Mendenhall and to his colleague, Dr. Merriam, to find it thus clearly proved that they were right and their British associates wrong.

The final clause is here again a diplomatic concession to take the sting out of the real admission. The rapid fall in the pelagic catch as compared with the more even decline of the breeding herd is a natural phenomenon. Pelagic sealing not only destroys the herd, but it is necessarily self-destructive because it preys upon its own capital. The more successful it is the sooner it must cease. With the decline of the herd it is itself declining, and the rapidity of its fall proves the nearness of the end. For the years since 1894 the pelagic catch has been 61,000, 56,000, 43,000, and 25,000 respectively. It is a significant fact that in four years, under regulations which permit the pelagic sealer to take all he can get, the product of his industry has fallen to less than one half.

15. In this greater reduction of the pelagic catch, compared with the gradual decrease of the herd, there is a tendency toward equilibrium, or a stage at which the numbers of the breeding herd would neither increase nor decrease. In considering the probable size of the herd in the immediate future, there remains to be estimated the additional factor of decline resulting from reductions in the number of surviving pups, caused by the larger pelagic catch of 1894 and 1895.

The two statements in this paragraph are not related. The first is a part of the preceding paragraph and is self-evident. Should the pelagic catch continue to decrease, as it must, it will eventually come within the margin of six and two thirds per cent. It has yet to fall far before this end is reached. Then will come that much-mooted "equilibrium," when the herd will be too insignificant to be worthy of attack--the equilibrium of ruin. There is no comfort in this prospect, either for the pelagic sealer or for the owner of the herd, and it takes no note of the injury which has been accomplished in the past, much less of possible restoration in the future. The equilibrium here suggested is purely a figure of speech, another concession to diplomacy.

The final statement of this paragraph is more important. The starvation of pups as a result of the killing of mothers at sea has been a fact strenuously denied from the first by the British side of the fur-seal controversy. After the actual counting of 16,000 of these starved pups in 1896, this position could no longer be maintained. At the same time a specific admission of the fact of starvation and of the destruction of unborn pups was too difficult a matter for the British experts to face. These facts are left to be inferred from the "reductions in surviving pups" here noted and from the admission that "nursing and pregnant females" are taken in the pelagic catch. Stated directly, it is here admitted that on account of "the larger pelagic catch of 1894 and 1895," numbers of pups starved to death on the rookeries or died unborn with their mothers which in the course of Nature should have reached the killable and breeding age.

16. The diminution of the herd is yet far from a stage which involves or threatens the actual extermination of the species, so long as it is protected in its haunts on land. It is not possible during the continuation of the conservative methods at present in force upon the islands, with the further safeguard of the protected zone at sea, that any pelagic killing should accomplish this final end. There is evidence, however, that in its present condition the herd yields an inconsiderable return either to the lessees of the islands or to the owners of the pelagic fleet.

The statements of this concluding paragraph must be taken in close connection, and the "ifs" must be carefully noted if they are not to prove very misleading. The opening sentence refers to the biologic extinction of the herd as contrasted with its commercial ruin. The former is as yet far off, the latter is a matter of history, as is admitted in the concluding statement--"an inconsiderable return." This means simply that the herd has ceased to be a commercial factor, and henceforth under present conditions sealing, whether on land or at sea, must be conducted at a loss.

This has an important bearing upon the suggested impossibility of bringing about the extinction of the species. It all depends upon whether present conditions are maintained. The breeding islands and the sixty-mile protected zone must be guarded. It cost the United States $175,000 for patrol in 1896. England's expense was less, but still considerable. It is beyond reason that this expensive protection should be continued at a loss or without hope of ultimate restoration of the herd. Remove the protection for a single season and the herd would be practically exterminated. A scattered remnant would doubtless escape to maintain a melancholy equilibrium, or perhaps to recuperate and again attract the cupidity of some adventurous sealing captain, but the herd as such would be at an end.

Stated without reference to diplomatic necessities, this concluding paragraph admits two important things: first, that the herd of fur seals resorting to the Pribilof Islands is commercially ruined; second, that its extinction as a species only awaits the abandonment of certain arduous and costly measures of protection now maintained solely in the hope of more adequate protection and the ultimate restoration of the herd.

Such was the work of the Conference of Fur-Seal Experts of 1897. The handwriting of diplomacy is mingled with that of science in its findings, but the resulting obscurity affects only minor matters. The important issues of the vexatious Bering Sea controversy are squarely met and finally settled. It is needless to say that there no longer exists a fur-seal question. It is merely a question of how to get rid of the destructive agency of pelagic sealing. This is a matter for diplomacy to adjust. Any odium which may have attached to the "man of science" as a result of the failure of the meeting of 1892 is effectually wiped out, and if the lesson is read aright by the nations, henceforth the scientific expert must be counted an essential factor in the settlement of governmental disputes.

FOOTNOTE:

[39] This table of statistics need not be quoted here in full. The following section, embracing the ten years prior to 1889 and including 1884, will suffice:

+------------+---------+-----------+-----------+---------- | | Hauling | | | YEAR. | Date quota | grounds | Number of | Killed on | Killed at | filled. | driven. | drives. | land. | sea. -------+------------+---------+-----------+-----------+---------- 1879 | 16 | 71 | 36 | 110,411 | 8,557 1880 | 17 | 78 | 38 | 105,718 | 8,418 1881 | 20 | 99 | 34 | 105,063 | 10,382 1882 | 20 | 86 | 36 | 99,812 | 15,551 1883 | 19 | 81 | 39 | 79,509 | 16,557 1884 | 21 | 101 | 42 | 105,434 | 16,971 1885 | 27 | 106 | 63 | 105,024 | 23,040 1886 | 26 | 117 | 74 | 104,521 | 28,494 1887 | 24 | 101 | 66 | 105,760 | 30,628 1888 | 27 | 102 | 73 | 103,304 | 26,189 1889 | 81 | 110 | 74 | 102,617 | 29,858 -------+------------+---------+-----------+-----------+----------

* * * * *

In a paper on the industrial applications of electro-chemistry, Mr. Thomas Ewan points out as among those that may yet be developed, that it is possible, by compressing sulphur dioxide and air into separate carbon tubes dipping in sulphuric acid, to cause the two gases to combine to form sulphuric acid, and at the same time furnish an electric current. "The alluring prospect," he says, "of obtaining electric energy as a by-product in a chemical works should be a sufficient incentive to efforts to overcome the numerous difficulties in the way."

A SCHOOL FOR THE STUDY OF LIFE UNDER THE SEA.

(_Naples Aquarium._)

BY ELEANOR HODGEN PATTERSON.

To go deep down under the sea, in the warm waters of the south, where exist not only the varieties of fish with which we are familiar, but thousands of jewel-like forms of animal life never seen by us, has hitherto been impossible to any but the boldest fishermen and divers. But of late years in the small aquarium at Naples the sea has been brought up, so to speak, upon the earth for us to see these strange creatures as they exist in their homes under the water, as they eat their food, as they love and hate, and prey upon each other.

Small as the collection at first seems to be, there is no zoölogical station in the world to compare with it. Probably there never will be again. Because of its advantageous station on the shores of the Mediterranean, where it is claimed the waters which wash Italy and Sicily yield a greater variety of sea life than even tropical waters, and also its comparative accessibility to all countries, the scholars who come here from all over the world find that they are able to study here as they can nowhere else the strange habits of the tiny animals down at the bottom of the sea.

There is no superfluous room taken up in the Naples aquarium for the fish that may be studied in aquariums elsewhere. Only the rarest, the strangest, the most curious creatures are here to be seen.

But one room of the beautiful building devoted to the zoölogical station, which stands on that street of Naples running along the sea, is shown to the public. One walks into it from the level of the street, and the transition from the light outside to strange semi-darkness is as if one were to suddenly find himself walking upon the bottom of the sea.

The light comes only from above, shining through water of many hundreds of cubic feet, on to what seems at first a garden of moving flowers behind tanks of clear glass, which seem, so complete is the illusion, not like glass at all, but water. The visitor walks along dark alleys lined on both sides with these brilliant tanks, and the beautiful sea animals are so close that it seems easy to touch them. It is like being in a narrow, dark theater with the stage all around and about, strangely illuminated, not by footlights, but by a radiance from above.

There are about thirty tanks in all, and at the very first of these glass-walled vats we stopped entranced. Behind it were piles of rocks shining in the water, and from every crevice grew what seemed brilliant flowers, but of colors so soft and waxlike that they were almost more lovely than our flowers of earth.

"Surely these deep red ones that cover the rocks to the left are a species of aster, and these are cacti, and these, yes, these reddish-brown one are chrysanthemums and nothing else."

But even as we spoke we saw the petals of first one, then another, flower wave back and forth, and in and out, with curious curling movements, as none of our flowers do, even in the most various winds, and then from above a long pole was suddenly thrust down into the water, at the end of which was stuck a piece of raw red meat about as large as a walnut.

It was the keeper come to feed his strange charges. Again and again were the bits of meat thrust down into the hearts of the sea flowers, and then we discovered with a kind of shock that these asters and cacti and chrysanthemums were not flowers at all, but flesh-eating animals, and that each waving petal was a mouth, by which the creature sucked in the blood of the meat.

When all the juice had been extracted from the meat, the many mouths attached to each seeming flower, that had been tightly curled upon the raw flesh, now unfolded again into their petal-like positions in a circle, one over the other, and the meat, now but a tiny ball of dry pulp, slowly sank to the bottom of the tank. What the calyx was like, or whether it had any body at all, we could not see, so entirely hidden was it behind these many waving, armlike mouths.

In the next tank several sea horses were swimming merrily in and out of rocks that were covered by a growth of miniature trees. They were smaller than the tiniest hobbyhorse that has ever been seen, as small almost as the toy horses in a "Noah's ark." The resemblance of these small fish, not larger than smelts or minnows, that have come to be known as "sea horses," to real horses is in the head only. The rest of the body tapers off into the ordinary fishlike form. I wondered, as I looked at these small horses of the sea, if it was from them that the old myth of the existence of mermaids arose. "Half fish, half women" were the mermaids, but "half fish, half horses" are these fish.

They were lively little creatures, and swam in and out of the tiny forest as if they were playing a game of "tag." What a beautiful little forest it was to play in! The trees had brown trunks about the size of one's finger, and from the top a graceful, palmlike foliage branched out, but the foliage was not in greens, but deep, translucent reds, or coral pinks, or warm browns.

While I was admiring one of the little coral pink trees, one of the sea horses swam straight into its foliage, when, to my amazement, and evidently to the amazement of the sea horse also, the foliage instantly disappeared down into the tree trunk, leaving only the brown stem standing.

Aghast with surprise at the sudden revelation that this charming foliage, like the petals of the flowers in the last tank, was also a cluster of living suckers, I asked what name they were called by, and heard with disgust the answer "worms." These beautiful, curious creatures only the things we know by the loathsome word "worms!"