A duty which at times has come very near to true war service, has been the enforcement of the _modus vivendi_ agreed upon by Great Britain and the United States, as a temporary solution of the problem of the threatened extinction of the fur-bearing seals. This story of the seal "fishery," and the cruel and wholesale slaughter which for years attended it, is one of the most revolting chapters in the long history of civilized man's warfare on dumb animals. It is to be noted that it is only the civilized man who pursues animals to the point of extinction. The word "savage" has come to mean murderous, bloodthirsty, but the savages of North America hunted up and down the forests and plains for uncounted centuries, living wholly on animal food, finding at once their livelihood and their sport in the chase, dressing in furs and skins, and decking themselves with feathers, but never making such inroads upon wild animal life as to affect the herds and flocks. Civilized man came with his rifles and shot-guns, his eagerness to kill for the sake of killing, his cupidity, which led him to ignore breeding-seasons, and seek the immediate profit which might accrue from a big kill, even though thereby that particular form of animal life should be rendered extinct. In less than forty years after his coming to the great western plains, the huge herds of buffalo had disappeared. The prairie chicken and the grouse became scarce, and fled to the more remote regions. Of lesser animal life, the woods and fields in our well-settled states are practically stripped bare. A few years ago, it became apparent that for the seals of the North Pacific ocean and Bering Sea, early extinction was in store. These gentle and beautiful animals are easily taken by hunters who land on the ice floes, where they bask by the thousands, and slaughter them right and left with heavy clubs. The eager demand of fashionable women the world over for garments made of their soft, warm fur, stimulated pot-hunters to prodigious efforts of murder. No attention was given to the breeding season, mothers with young cubs were slain as ruthlessly as any. Schooners and small steamers manned by as savage and lawless men as have sailed the seas since the days of the slave-trade, put out from scores of ports, each captain eager only to make the biggest catch of the year, and heedless whether after him there should be any more seals left for the future. This sort of hunting soon began to tell on the numbers of the hapless animals, and the United States Government sent out a party of scientific men in the revenue cutter "Lincoln," to investigate conditions, particularly in the Pribylof Islands, which had long been the favorite sealing ground. As a result of this investigation, the United States and Great Britain entered into a treaty prohibiting the taking of seals within sixty miles of these islands, thus establishing for the animals a safe breeding-place. The