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.