The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1911. SAVING THE SEALS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 145, 11 August 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1911. SAVING THE SEALS.

The recently concluded treaty between Great Britain, Russia, the United States and Japan, for the prohibition of pelagic sealing for a term of years will probably make the sealskin jacket an oven more expensive luxury than it has been in the past. The treaty provides that the United States, Japan, and Russia contribute the skins of thirty per cent, of taeir respective catches to the general fund, which wil| bo equally divided between Japan and Canada as an indemnity for their abstention from pelagic sealing. Furthermore, the United States will advance Canada a cash bonus of two hundred thousand dollars to reimburse the owners of the vessels at present engaged in pelagic sealing, which sum will gradually be made up by countervailing reductions in the American contributions of skins to the general fund. The agreement includes measures to ensure Government supervision to prevent poaching. The seals which are now left breed on the Commander and Ihihylofl Islands, in the Behring Sea, which belong to Russia and the United States respectively, and a few also on certain Japanese islands. As the seal is polygamous, and there arc a large number of superfluous males, it is possible by killing only those latter to provide a sufficient number ol skins without diminishing the herds or ever without preventing their multiplication. Stringent Government -regulations have been made for this purpose, and it is the aim of Russia and the United States to confine the hilling to the islands, where the superfluous males can ho separated from the others. The females, however, make frequent visits to the feeding grounds, some 150 miles away, and they are then attacked by “pelagic” or deep sea, sealers, whose depredations cause enormous damage, and will, if not checked, before long exterminate the seals. In 1893 it was arranged that sealing should not .he permitted within sixty miles of the coast, hut the. limit was not wide enough, and the Japanese did not share in the agreement, so that Japanese and Canadian vessels still continued to shoot the females on their journeys to the lending grounds. It is estimated that for every skin taken in this way ' " arc lost, for many seals sink or .swim away to die before they are picked up, and besides this the young seals on the islands arc left to starve to death.