rought to light in connection with it.

Mr. David Starr Jordan, the President of the Leland Stanford University,
wrote a very fine article on the subject which appeared in _The Forum_
last month.

He said that the shameful practice of killing the mother seals when they
went to their feeding-grounds could be entirely stopped by a means much
simpler than the making of a treaty with Great Britain. This means, he
stated, has already been tried and found to be most satisfactory; it was
in short, branding the skins of the female puppies.

To brand means to mark with a hot iron.

Branding is a practice in use among all cattle raisers, who are thus
able to mark their beasts, and if they stray, can recognize and recover
them.

In the West, when the owners round up their cattle to count and separate
them, each man can tell his own stock by the brand. At the round-up, the
young calves, which have been born since the last count, are also
marked.

The branding of the seals is not for purposes of identification, but so
to destroy the skin of the female seal that it will have no market
value.

The seal puppies can be easily caught and handled. Last year three
hundred and fifty of them were marked with a series of bars across the
back, which had much the appearance of a huge face.

The hair will never grow again over the spot that has been burned, and
the marks are made in all the best parts of the fur, so that the skin is
utterly destroyed, and the seal is no longer worth killing.

The pups that had been branded were very carefully watched until they
had quite recovered from their burns, and it was found that none of them
had been injured by the branding, nor did their altered appearance seem
to make any difference in their habits, nor in the friendliness of their
tribe toward them.

* * * * *

The Dingley Tariff Bill was brought up in the Senate last week.

It promises to be a very long while before a vote is reached on this
subject.

Senator Aldrich, who has charge of the bill in the Senate, explained its
various portions with the greatest care.

He stated that it was the desire of the framers of the bill to assist
the growth of agriculture, commerce, and manufacture, and that their one
aim was to enable American industries to compete with those of foreign
countries.

He went on to say that there was no desire to raise the rate of taxation
on imports (or goods brought into this coun