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Encyclopedia Britannica

SEA LAWS

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 538 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SCY-SHA

SEA LAWS , a title which came into use among writers on maritime law in the 16th century, and was applied by them to certain medieval collections of usages of the sea recognized as having the force of customary law, either by the judgments of a maritime court or by the resolutions of a congress of merchants and shipmasters. To the former class belong the sea laws of Oleron, embodying the usages of the mariners of the Atlantic; under the latter come the sea laws of Visby (Wisby), reflecting the customs of the mariners of the North Sea and of the Baltic.
The earliest collection of such usages received in England is described in the Black Book of the Admiralty as the " Laws of Oleron," whilst the earliest known text is contained in the Liber memorandorum of the

corporation

CORPORATION (from Lat. corporare, to form into a body, corpus, corporis)

of the City of London, preserved in the archives of their Guildhall. These laws are in an early handwriting of the 14th century, and the title pre-fixed to them is La Cherie d'Oleroun des juggementz de la mier. How and in what manner these " Judgments of the Sea " came to be collected is not altogether certain. Cleirac, a learned advocate in the parlement of Bordeaux, in the introduction to his work on Les Us et coustumes de la mer (Bordeaux, 1647), states that Eleanor of Aquitaine (q.v.), having observed during her visit to the Holy Land that the collection of customs of the
sea contained in The Book of the Consulate of the Sea (see CONSULATE OF THE SEA) was held in high repute in the Levant, directed on her return that a record should be made of the judgments of the maritime court of the island of Oleron (at that time a peculiar court of the duchy of Guienne), in order that they might serve as law amongst the mariners of the Western Sea. He states further that Richard I. of England, on his return from the Holy Land, brought back with him a roll of those judgments, which he published in England and ordained to be observed as law. Though R. G. Marsden doubts the story of Richard I. having brought back La Leye Olyroun to England, the general outline of Cleirac's account accords with a memorandum on the famous roll of 12 Edw. III., " De Superioritate Maris Angliae " (for many years preserved in the archives of the Tower of London, now deposited in the Public Record Office). According to this memorandum, the king's justiciaries were instructed to declare and uphold the laws and statutes made by the kings of England, in order to maintain peace and justice amongst the people of every nation passing through the sea of England.
The earliest version of these Oleron sea laws comprised certain customs of the sea which were observed in the wine and the oil trade, as carried on between the ports of Guienne and those of Brittany, Normandy, England and Flanders. No English translation seems to have been made before the Rutter of the Sea, printed in London by Thomas Petyt in 1536, in which they are styled " the Lawes of ye Yle of Auleron and ye Judgementes of ye See." French was, in fact, a tongue familiar to the English high court of admiralty down to the reign of Henry VI. A Flemish text, however, appears to have been made in the latter part of the 14th century, the Purple Book of Bruges, preserved in the archives of Bruges, in a handwriting somewhat later than that of the Liber Memorandorum. Prefixed to this Flemish version is the title, " Dit es de Coppie van den Rollen van Oleron van den Vonnesse van der Zee." Certain changes, however, have been made in the Purple Book of Bruges in the names of the ports mentioned in the

original

ORIGINAL

Gascon text. For instance, Sluys is in several places substituted for Bordeaux, just as in the Rutter of the Sea London replaces Bordeaux. That these sea laws were administered in the Flemish maritime courts may be inferred from two facts. First, a Flemish translation of them was made for the use of the maritime tribunal of Damme, which was the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

Flemish entrepot of the wine trade in the 13th century. The text of this translation has been published by Adriaen Verwer under the title of the Judgments of Damme. In the second place, there is preserved in the archives of the senate of Danzig, where there was a maritime court of old, an early manuscript of the 15th century, containing a Flemish reproduction of the Judgments of Oleron headed " Dit is Twater Recht in Vlaenderen." So far there can be no doubt that the Judgments of Oleron were received as sea laws in Flanders as well as in England in the 14th century. Further inquiry can trace them as they followed the course of the wine trade in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. ' Boxhorn, in his Chronyk van Zeelande, has published a Dutch version of them, which van Leeuwen has reproduced in his Batavia Illustrata, under the title of the Laws of West-Capell in Zealand. .Verwer has also published a Dutch text of them in his Nederlant's See-Rechten, accompanied by certain customs of Amsterdam, of which other MSS. exist, in which those customs are described as usages of Stavoren, or as usages of Enkhuizen, both ports of active commerce in the 15th century. Of these customs of Amsterdam, or, as they were more generally styled, " Ordinances of Amsterdam," further mention is made below.
A new and enlarged collection of sea laws, purporting to be an extract of the ancient laws of Oleron, made its appearance in the latter part of the 15th century in Le Grant routier de la mer, printed at Poitiers in France by Jan de Marnef, at the sign of the Pelican. The title-page is without a date, but the dedication, which purports to be addressed by its author, Pierre Garcie, alias Ferrande, to his godson, is dated from St Gilles on the last day of May 1483. It contains forty-seven articles, of which the first twenty-two are identical with articles of the " Judgments of the Sea," in the Liber Memorandorum, the remaining articles being evidently of more

recent

RECENT

origin. A black-letter edition of this work in French, withouta date, is preserved in the Bddleian Library at Oxford, and to the last article this colophon is appended: " Ces choses precedentes sont extraictes du tres utille et profittable Roolle Doloyron par le dict Pierre Garcie alias Ferrande." An English translation is printed in the appendix to A View of the Admiral Jurisdiction, published in 1661 by Dr John Godolphin, in which the laws are described as " an Extract of the Ancient Laws of Oleron rendered into English out of Garsias alias Ferrand." Although this new text had the recommendation of an advocate who had filled the office of judge of the Admiralty Court during the Commonwealth and been appointed king's advocate-general by Charles II., it seems to have been superseded in a short time by Cleirac's Us et coustumes de la mer, to which was appended the following clause of authentication: " Tesmoin le Seel de 1'Isle d'Oleron, estably aux contracts de la dite Isle, le jour du Mardy apres la Feste Sainct Andre 1'an mille deux cens soixant-six." Cleirac does not inform us from what source or under what circumstances he procured his text, nor on what authority he has adopted in certain articles readings at variance with those of Garcie, whilst he retains the same number of articles, to wit, forty-seven. The clause of authentication cannot be accepted as a warranty above suspicion, as the identical clause of authentication with the same date is appended to the early Norman and

Breton

BRETON, BRITTON
BRETON, JULES ADOLPHE

versions of the rolls, which contain only twenty-six articles. Cleirac's version, however, owing probably to the superior style in which it was edited, and to the importance of the other treatises on maritime matters which Cleirac had brought together for the first time in a single volume, seems to have obtained a preference in England over Garcie's text, as it was received in the High Court of Admiralty during the judgeship of Sir Leoline Jenkyns, and an English translation of it was introduced into the English translation of the Black Book of the Admiralty made by John Bedford, the deputy registrar of the High Court. It seems to have been Bedford's intention to print this translation under the title of " Sea Laws "; but the manuscript passed into the hands of Sir Leoline Jenkyns, who gave it to the College of Advocates in 1685. The Black Book itself, which was missing for a long time from the Admiralty registry, was discovered in the 19th century and replaced in the archives of the Admiralty Court. Of these two versions of the sea laws of Oleron the earlier obtained a world-wide reception, for it was translated into Castilian (Fuero de Layron) by order of King Alphonso X., and a Gascon text of it is still preserved in the archives of Leghorn, apparently in a handwriting of the 15th century, entitled " Asso es la copia dens Rolles de Leron de jucgemens de mar."
The parent stock of the Visby sea laws would appear to have been a code preserved in the chancery of Lubeck,

drawn

DRAWN

up in the Old Saxon tongue, and dated 1240. This code contains amongst many others certain articles on maritime law which are identical with articles in the Gotland sea laws. This collection comprises sixty-six articles, and it is now placed beyond a doubt by modern researches, especially of Professor Schlyter of Lund, that these Gotland sea laws are a compilation derived from three distinct sourcesa Lubeck, an Oleron and an Amsterdam source. A Saxon or Low German text of this collection was printed for the first time in 1505 at Copenhagen by Godfrey de Gemen, a native of Gouda in Holland, who is reputed to have set up the earliest printing-press in Copenhagen. This print has no title-page, and in this respect resembles the earliest known print of The, Consulate of the 'Sea; but upon a blank leaf, which occupies the place of a frontispiece in one of two copies of Godfrey de Gemen 's text, both preserved in the royal library at Copenhagen, there has been inserted with a pen in alternate lines of black and red ink the title " Dat hogheste Gotlansche Water-Recht gedrucket to Koppenhaven Anno Domini M.n.v,, " and there has also been inserted on the first page of the text the introductory title " Her beghynt dat hogheste Water-Recht " (here begins the supreme sea law). Professor Schlyter discovered a MS. (No. 3123) in the royal library at Copenhagen, which is written on parchment in a hand of the 15th century, and from which it seems probable that Godfrey de Gemen mainly derived his text, as it comprises the same number of articles, containing the same matter arranged in the same order, with this minor difference, that, whilst both the MS. and the print have the simple title " Water-Recht " prefixed to the first article, the MS. has also a similar title prefixed to the fifteenth. Further, as this article, together with those that follow it in the MS. appears to be in a handwriting different from that of the articles that precede, the fifteenth article may justly be considered as the first of a distinct series, more particularly as they are numbered in Roman characters, beginning with 1, and such characters are continued with a single interruption down to the end of the MS. Although, however, the numeration of the articles of this second series is continuous and the handwriting of the MS. from the fifteenth to the sixty-

sixth

SIXTH

article is unchanged, the text of the series is not continuous, as the fortieth article commences with an introductory clause" This is the ordinance which the skippers and merchants have resolved amongst themselves as ship law." There is no difficulty in recognizing the first division of this second series of sea laws as a Low German version of the Judgments of Oleron, transmitted most probably through a Flemish text. This hypothesis would account for the substitution in several articles of Sluys for Bordeaux. On the other hand, the introductory clause which ushers in the fortieth article is identical with the title that is generally prefixed
to MSS. of the maritime Ordinances of Amsterdam, and the text of this and of the following articles down to the sixty-fifth inclusive is evidently of Dutch origin and more or less identical with Verwer's text of the usages of Amsterdam: M. Pardessus, in his valuable Collection de loss maritimes, published in Paris before Professor Schlyter made known the result of his researches, justly remarked that the provisions of several articles of this last division of the sea laws are inconsistent with the theory that they originated at Visby. It may be observed that the sixty-

sixth

SIXTH

article of the MS. is a Lubeck law identical with the first article of the first series, which is of Lubeck origin. No colophon is appended to this final article in the MS. Nevertheless, Godfrey de Gemen's edition of 1505, which breaks off in the middle of the sixty-sixth article of the MS., has the following colophon: " Here end the Gotland sea laws, which the community of merchants and skippers have ordained and made at Visby, that all men may regulate themselves by them. Printed at Copenhagen, A.D. M.D.V." The question naturally suggests itself, To what MS. was Godfrey de Gemen indebted for this colophon, or is the alternative more probable that he devised it ? There is no known MS. of this collection of an earlier date to which an appeal can be made as an authority for this colophon; on the contrary, the only known MSS. of which the date is earlier than Godfrey de Gemen's print, both of which are in the library of the university of Copenhagen, are without this colophon, and one of them, which purports to have been completed at Nykoping on the Eve of the Visitation of the Virgin in 1494, concludes with a colophon which precludes all idea that anything has been omitted by the scribe, viz., " Here ends this book, and may God send us His grace, Amen." We are disposed to think that Gemen himself devised this colophon. He was engaged in printing for the first time other collections of laws for the Danish government, and, as Gotland was at that time a possession of Den-mark, he may have thus distinguished the sea laws from another collection, namely, of land laws. Professor Schlyter, however, believes Gemen may have borrowed it from a MS. which is lost, or at all events is not known. There is some support to this view in the tact that in the archives of the guildhall of Lubeck there is pre-served a MS. of 1533 which contains a Low German version of the same collection of sea laws, with a rubric prefixed to the first article announcing them to be " the water law or sea law, which is the oldest and highest law of Visby," and there are good reasons for supposing that the scribe of this MS. copied his text from a MS. other than the Copenhagen MS. The same observation will apply to a second MS. of a similar character preserved in the library of the gymnasium of Lubeck, which purports to have been written in 1537. But as regards the Visby sea laws little reliance can be placed on such rubrics or colophons as proofs of the facts recited in them, though they may be valuable as evidence of the reputed origin of the sea laws at the time when the scribe completed the MS. In

illustration

ILLUSTRATION

of this view it may be stated that in the same year in which the more

recent

RECENT

of these two MSS. purports to have been completednamely 1537there was printed at Lubeck an enlarged edition of the sea laws consisting of seventy-two articles, being a Low German translation of a Dutch text, in which six additional Dutch laws had been inserted which are not found in the Copenhagen MS., nor have a place in Gemen's text, yet to this edition is prefixed the title, "This is the highest and oldest sea law, which the community of merchants and shipmasters have ordained and made at Visby, that all persons who would be secure may regulate themselves by it." Further, it has an introductory clause to its thirty-seventh article" This is the ordinance which the community of skippers and merchants have resolved upon amongst themselves as ship law, which the men of Zeeland, Holland, Flanders hold, and with the law of Visby, which is the oldest ship law." At the end of the seventy-second article there follows this colophon: " Here ends the Gotland sea law, which the community of merchants and mariners have ordained and made at Visby, that each may regulate himself by it. All honour be to God, MDxxxvir." Each article of this edition has prefixed to it after its particular number the word " belevinge " (judgment). It would thus appear that the Visby sea laws have fared like the Oleron sea laws: they have gathered bulk with increasing years.
The question remains to be answered, How did this collection of sea laws acquire the title of the " Visby sea laws " outside the Baltic ? for under such title they were received in Scotland in the 16th century, as may be inferred from extracts from them cited in Sir James Balfour's System of the more Ancient Laws of Scotland, which, although not printed till 1754, was completed before his death in 1583. The text of the Visby sea laws generally current in England is an English translation of a French text which Cleirac published in 1641 in his Us et coustumes de la mer, and is an abbreviated, and in many respects mutilated, version of the

original

ORIGINAL

sea laws. This inquiry, however, would open a new chapter on the subject of the northern sea laws, and the civilizing influence which the merchants of Visby exercised in the 13th century through their factories at Novgorod, linking thereby the trade of the Baltic to that of the Black Sea. (T. T.)
See Pardessus, Collection de lois maritimes anterieures au X VIIIe sack (6 vols., Paris, 1828-1845) ; Schlyter, Wisby Stadslag och Sjoratt, being vol. viii. of the Corpus furls Sueco-Gotorum Antiqui (Lund, 1853); and The Black Book of the Admiralty, ed. by Sir Travers Twiss (4 vols., London, 1871-1876). An exhaustivelycritical edition of the Rhodian sea law (given in vol. i. of Pardessus) by W. Ashburner, appeared in 1909 (Oxford, University Press). It contains valuable material not only on the Rhodian sea law, but on the various other sea laws in force on the Mediterranean coast.
SEAL-FISHERIES. Seals of all descriptions (see SEAL)whether belonging to the typical family Phocidae, or true seals, or to the Otariidae, or sea-lions and sea-bearsare of great commercial value. Whereas, however, the true seals and the sea-lions are hunted only for the sake of their hides and blubber, the sea-bears are sought on account of their valuable " seal skin (see CARNIVORA; also FuR). Walruses (Odobaenidae) are hunted not only for their hides and blubber but also for the ivory of their tusks, which is, however, far less valuable than elephant-ivory. Among the more important species of sea-bears or fur-seals, which yield commercial " seal-skin," may be mentioned Otaria (Arctocephalus) australis of South America and the adjacent islands, including the Galapagos group and Tierra-del-Fuego; O. (A.) antarctica or pusilla of South Africa and the Crozets; O. (A.) gazella of Kerguelen Island; and O. (A.) Forsteri of the coasts of New Zealand and South-Western Australia. This group was widely distributed over the pelagic islands of the southern hemisphere, but is now practically extinct in the greater part of its habitat, although remnants of importance exist on Lobos Island in the mouth of the river Plata in

Uruguay

URUGUAY (officially the Oriental Republic of the Uruguay, and long locally called the Banda Oriental, meaning the land on the eastern side of the river Uruguay, from which the country takes its name)

, and on the islands off Cape Horn, both of which now receive protection from government. A second group is represented by Otaria (Callorhinus) ursina of the

Commander

COMMANDER

Islands and Pribiloff Islands in Bering Sea, Robben Island and the Kurile Islands, Sea of Okhotsk, and other parts of the North Pacific; the forms from the different islands having received distinct specific names.
Of the southern herds little authentic information exists, but the records for the northern herds are fairly complete. At the period of its maximum development, 187o to 188o, the herd of the Pribiloff Islands numbered about 21 million animals; that of the

Commander

COMMANDER

Islands about one-half as many. The herd in the Sea of Okhotsk is one of minor importance, numbering in 1897 less than r000 animals on Robben Island. All these herds became greatly reduced, and in 1896-1897 numbered in all not more than 600,000 animals. The typical adult male or bull (sikatch) of the second group attains maturity about the seventh year, and weighs from 400 to 500 lb. It is 6 ft. in length, with a girth of 41 ft. The fur is blackish or dark brown, with long yellowish-white hairs, especially long and firm on the back of the neck, forming the so-called " wig " or mane. The animal stands erect and runs or " lollops " along the ground when on land. The adult female, or cow (matka), is much smaller, averaging about 8o lb in weight, with length and girth in pro-portion. The fur is of varying shades of brown; she bears her first young at the age of three years.
The breeding-grounds are boulder-strewn beaches or rocky hill slopes near the shore. On these the sea-bears congregate in close-set masses called " rookeries." The unit of rookery life is the family group, or " harem," each bull collecting as many females as he can control. The number ranges from 1 to too or more, averaging about 30. The bulls reach the islands early in May and take up their places. The cows begin to arrive the first week in June. The number on the rookeries from day to day grows steadily to a climax about the middle of July, when about one-half are present, the number actually on the ground diminishing to about one-fourth at and after the close of the breeding season with the end of July. The single young, or pup (kotik), weighing io to 12 lb and jet black in colour, is born within six to forty-eight hours after the arrival of the cow. Within a week the latter is served by the bull, and by the end of another week she goes to sea to feed, returning at gradually lengthening intervals through the summer to nourish her young, left in the meantime to care for itself on the rookeries. The bulls, having fasted since their arrival in May, go away in August to feed. The pups learn to swim at the age of a month or six weeks, and in November, with the approach of winter, swim away with their mothers to the south. The winter migration of the
538
Pribiloff seals extends as far south as the latitude of southern California, the return course following the coast. The Commander seals reach the latitude of southern Japan and return on their course. The fur-seals find their food, chiefly squid, Alaska pollack, and especially a small smelt-like fish (Therobromus callorhini), in deep water, and their feeding-grounds in Bering Sea and on the migrations lie mainly along the 1oofathom curve.
The Commander Islands were discovered by Vitus Bering in 1741, and our first knowledge of the northern fur-seal herds comes from the notes of Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist accompanying Bering's expedition. The Pribiloff Islands were discovered in 1786 and transferred with the territory of Alaska to the United States in 1867. Up to 1867 the catch taken by the Russian Company holding the Alaska monopoly was about 75,000 yearly. Between 1868 and 1897 the reported catch of seals from the Pribiloff herd on land was 2,440,213, and 651,282 were reported as taken by pelagic sealing; but the latter is certainly greatly under the truth. From 1867 to 1902 the fur-seal catch was worth, it has been estimated, about $35,000,000. From 1870 to 1890 the United States government leased the islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, and in 1890 the monopoly passed to the North American Commercial Company; this lease expired on the 1st of May 191o, and was not to be renewed. The catch was limited to 6o,000 in 1890 and 1891; 7500 in 1892 and 1893; 20,000 in 1894; 15,000 in 1895, 20,000 in 1897; 30,000 in 1896, 1898-1903; and 15,000 in 1904, 1905 and 1906. The total number of skins shipped by the lessees from 1870 to 1906 was 2,135,248. From 1868 to 1906 the receipts from royalties on skins was $9,311,054.77, and the expenses of the United States were $1,353,015.53 (including $349,464.88 for agents, $2J4,051.49 for supplies to natives, $483,842'65 for Bering Sea awards and commission, and $41,000.31 for investigation of the fur-seal fisheries in 1898-1899); besides this, from 1890 to 1895 the government expended $1,410,722 for the policing of Bering Sea and the prevention of illegal pelagic hunting.
The Russians worked out the principle, based on the polygamous habit of the animals, of affording absolute protection to the breeding Lands female herd, and confining the killing to the superfluous
1 and and
males. The young males, or bachelors, " haul out " to
Pew rest and sleep on beaches adjacent to, but distinct from,
sealing. the breeding-grounds. Here they are surrounded at night
by the sealing gangs, rounded up in droves of from woo to 3000, and driven inland to the killing-grounds. The large droves are broken up into successive " pods,' or groups, of from 20 to 5o, of which the " killable " seals (animals of three years of age or approximating to such in size) are knocked down with clubs, those too large or too small being allowed to escape. The skins are removed, salted in kenches and, when cured, are exported. The two important processes in dressing the skins are the removal of the long hairs which grow out through the short thick fur, and the dyeing of the fur itself black.
The decline in the fur-seal herds of Bering Sea isdue to the growth of a rival sealing industrythe hunting of the animals at sea with spear or shot-gun, known as pelagic sealing., Stragglers from the migrating herd had from the earliest times been taken by the Indians of Cape Flattery and Vancouver Island, going out from the shore in their canoes, but the number so captured was small. In 1879, however, sailing vessels began to be used to carry the hunters and their canoes out to the main body of the herd, and to enable them to follow its movements. The industry developed rapidly, by 1892 employing a fleet of 122 sailing vessels, each with from five to twenty hunting crews. The catch at sea grew to a maximum in 1894 of 140,000 skins. The operations of the fleet gradually extended to cover the entire migration route of the herd, and in 1883 the sealers entered its summer feeding-grounds in Bering Sea. Pelagic hunting, necessarily indiscriminate, affected most seriously the herd of breeding females. Investigations carried on in Bering Sea in 1895 and 1896 show that from 62 to 84% of the pelagic catch were of this class, the death of the female involving the death of her unborn offspring, as well as that of the unweaned young. From 187o to 1902 the " pelagic " catch has been estimated (Jordan) as 1,000,000, nearly half the corresponding total for the land-catch.
The abuse of pelagic sealing naturally created much indignation
1 A temporary cause for the shrinkage of the herd was the ravages of the Uncinaria, a worm which attacked the infant seals; in 1906 it seemed no longer to be present.in America. Under sanction of a claim made by Russia in 1821 to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea (a claim decided by the Paris Tribunal of 1893 to be untenable), the United States in 1886 seized sealing vessels operating in that seaamong them Canadian vessels. This brought on a diplomatic discussion with the British government, which culminated in 1892 in a treaty by which it was agreed to submit to arbitration the claims of the United States to jurisdiction in Bering Sea in the interests of her fur-seal herd when beyond the ordinary territorial limits. The Tribunal of Arbitration met in Paris in 1893 (see BERING SEA ARBITRATION). Its decision was adverse to the contentions of the United States, and equally adverse to the life of the fur-seal herds. As agreed upon in such event, the tribunal formulated a set of rules for the regulation of pelagic sealing, with a view to the protection of the seals. These regulations provided for a close season in May, June and July, and a protected zone of 6o m. radius about the breeding islands. The regulations failed of their object, because the breeding females do not feed within the protected area, but far outside, and are therefore taken without restriction on the feeding-grounds in August and September, their young being left to starve.
In 1896 it was agreed between the United States and Great Britain that a new investigation of the facts of seal life should be made. At the close of this inquiry in 1897 the two Commissions met in Washington as a Joint Conference bf Fur Seal Experts, and after a discussion of the results of their labours, a substantial agreement was reached on all essential facts. On the basis of this agreement the fur-seal question passed into the hands of a Joint High Commission, representing Great Britain, the United States and Canada, called at Quebec in September 1898 to consider a number of questions at issue between the United States and Canada. There the matter rested. Meanwhile the herds continued to decline, and the pelagic
catch itself fell rapidly with the depleted herds The following is a summary of the fur skins from various sources over the period 1743 to 1897:
From all sources prior to 1868 3,197,154
Land sealing, 1868-1897, Pribiloff herd . 2,440,213
Commander herd . 942,736
Pelagic sealing, 1868-1897, Pribiloff herd 651,282
Commander herd 312,247
Lobos Island skins 316,746
Cape Horn skins 122,390
Grand Total . . 7,982,768
For a full account of the fur-seals and the fur-seal industries, reference should be made to the reports of D'Arcy W. Thompson, Commissioner for Great Britain, and his associates, for 1896 and 1897 (Parliamentary Papers, " United States," No. 3 [1897], and No. I [1898]), and especially to the final report of David S. Jordan, Commissioner for the United States, and his associates, for the same years (Treasury Department Document No. 2017, Fur Seals and Fur Seal Islands of North Pacific Ocean, 4 vols. and atlas, Washington, 1898). Other papers of importance are: H. W. Elliott's " Monograph of the Seal Islands of Alaska," Bull. 147, U.S. Fish Commission (1882), and the report of C. H. Merriam and T. C. Mendenhall, the American Commissioners for 1891, Proc. Paris Arbitration, ii. 311-396.

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