"Last year, while the United States government were pressing Her Majesty's government to place further restrictions on pelagic sealing, they found it possible to kill 30,000 seals on the islands, of which Professor Jordan says (in one place in his report) 22,000 were, to the best of his information, three-year-olds, though (in another place) he estimated the total number of three-year-old males on the islands as 15,000 to 20,000. If such exhaustive slaughter is continued, it will, in the light of the past history of the herd, very quickly bring about that commercial extermination which has been declared in the United States to be imminent every year for the last twelve years. Enough has perhaps been said to justify the refusal of Her Majesty's government to enter on a precipitate revision of the regulations." {53} The two countries were thus being carried into serious opposition, on a matter that looks contemptible when compared with the great common interests which ought to bind them in firm friendship together. But, while the government of Great Britain declined to enter into conference with those of Russia, Japan and the United States, on general questions relating to the seals, it assented at length to a new conference with the United States and Canada, relative to the carrying out of the regulations prescribed by the Paris tribunal of 1893. Both conferences were held at Washington in October and November of 1897. The first resulted in a treaty (November 6) between Russia, Japan, and the United States, providing for a suspension of pelagic sealing during such time as might be determined by experts. The other conference led, after some interval, to the creation of a Joint High Commission for the settlement of all questions in dispute between the United States and Canada, the sealing question included. See (in this volume) CANADA: A. D. 1898-1899. So far as concerned its own citizens, the American government adopted vigorous measures for the suppression of pelagic sealing. An Act of Congress, approved by the President on the 29th December, 1897, forbade the killing of seals, by any citizen of the United States, in any part of the Pacific Ocean north of 35 degrees north latitude. The same act prohibited the importation into the United States of sealskins taken elsewhere than in the Pribilof Islands, and very strict regulations for its enforcement were issued by the Treasury Department. No sealskins, either in the raw or the manufactured state, might be admitted to the country, even among the personal effects of a traveller, unless accompanied by an invoice, signed by an United States Consul, certifying that they were not from seals killed at sea. Skins not thus certified were seized and destroyed.