We can ask for protection with better grace when we have accorded, unasked, protection to others." The report of Professor Thompson, made three months later, agreed but partially with that of the American experts. He admitted the extensive starving of the young seals, caused by the killing of the mothers, but contended that the herd was diminishing slightly, if at all, and he did not favor drastic measures for the suppression of pelagic sealing. The government of the United States adopted measures in accordance with the views of Professor Jordan, looking to an international regulation of the killing of seals. Hon. John W. Foster was appointed a special ambassador to negotiate arrangements to that effect. Through the efforts of Mr. Foster, an international conference on the subject was agreed to on the part of Russia and Japan, but Great Britain declined to take part. While these arrangements were pending, the American Secretary of State, Mr. Sherman, addressed a letter to the American Ambassador at London, Mr. Hay, criticising the conduct of the British government and its agents in terms that are not usual among diplomats, and which excited much feeling when the letter was published in July. This called out a reply from the British Colonial Secretary, Mr. Chamberlain, in which he wrote: "When Her Majesty's government sent their agents to inquire into the actual facts in 1896, it was found that, in spite of the large catch of 1895, the herd actually numbered more than twice as many cows as it had been officially asserted to contain in 1895. The result of these investigations, as pointed out in Lord Salisbury's dispatch of May 7, has further been to show that pelagic sealing is much less injurious than the practice pursued by the United States' lessees of killing on land every male whose skin was worth taking. If the seal herd to-day is, as Professor Jordan estimates, but one-fifth of what it was in 1872-74, that result must be, in great measure, due to the fact that, while the islands were under the control of Russia, that power was satisfied with an average catch of 33,000 seals; subsequently under the United States' control more than three times that number have been taken every year, until the catch was, perforce, reduced because that number of males could no longer be found.