ORAL ARGUMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. PHELPS. 265 



I have not yet mentioned Mr. Elliott; and except so far as JMr. Elli- 

 ott's Keport is to be relied ui)oii, there is absolutely no evidence (and 

 we shall cite .a great deal of evidence to the contrary) that there was a 

 diminution of the sort he undertakes to desciibe on those Islands whicb 

 could have had to do with the decrease of the birth-rate. 



Now, let me come to this matter of driving; and I have still to post- 

 pone the consideration of the only witness that really supports it, Mr. 

 Elliott. His theory is absolutely invented by himsell', — nobody ever 

 lieard of it before. He cites no authority for it, except a passage from 

 one of tlie liussian writers, which, as I shall show, is mistranslated and 

 reads exactly the other way. There are two passages in Mr, Elliott's 

 Eeport translated from the Kussian, and in both of them it appears not 

 merely that they are erroneously translated, but that the sense of the 

 passage translated is exactly the opposite of that which is given as his 

 translation. The hauling grounds are situated, as api)ears, at a dis- 

 tance of 1^ to 2^ miles; the average distance is about 1^ miles; the 

 llookery Charts in the United States map show this. Before pelagic 

 sealing obtained any dimensions, the killable seals were on the hauling 

 grounds, that is to say males from 2 to 5 years of age, — those males 

 that Mr. Lavender appears, by his statement, to have thought should 

 not have been killed. He does not tell us what you could kill if you 

 do not kill those, if you killed any, and the evidence shows that less 

 than an average of 20 ])er cent of these driven up were turned back. 

 Mr. Elliott's theory is that numbers were injured by this re-driving and 

 being allowed to go back. That is the i^oint I now come to. 



Up to 1890 there was no re driving, and there is not a word of evi- 

 dence to show that there was. None but a small percentage in the 

 drives, when a superabundance of seals would go up, and some might 

 come back again, but not in sufiticient number to be appreciable. It 

 is said they were turned back, and taking the largest construction 

 of this evidence, as I desire to do, and not to minimise it, you may 

 argue or infer that perhaps if some few went back from the drives they 

 might be driven over again, but whether they were not all ultimately 

 killed is of course quite a dilferent question. 



Till 1890, the seals were sufhciently abundant not to require this sec- 

 ond driving, and the driving which Mr, Elliott complains of never took 

 place till 1890, and that the evidence is conclusive to show. Now sup- 

 pose that by the driving in 1890 — and that is another conjecture that 

 is utterly without foundation — suppose that some of these re-driven 

 seals were injured by that process in 1890, when would that make its 

 appearance in the herd? They could not begin to be productive till 

 they were 5 or 6 years old — none could get on to the rookery and it is 

 not i)retended that they could. If then these driven seals could begin 

 to be productive when 5 or 6 years old, it would be, of course, still 

 another year after that, if not 2 or 3, before the results of any failure 

 in re-productive capacity would make itself appreciable. It is per- 

 fectly evident, therefore, that this decrease, which everybody agrees 

 was to be seen there in 1890 and 1891, could not have come from any 

 abuse in the driving in the year 1890. The very earliest time and sea- 

 son, that if any such facts were true, they could manifest themselves 

 on the Island would be some years later. In 1890 the catch was stopped 

 on the 20th July by Mr. Goff, the United States Treasury Agent, 

 because he perceived they could not get the requisite number which 

 their contract allowed, and less than 22,000 skins were taken that year. 

 It is undoubtedly true that, in order to get 22,000 skins in the year 1890 

 there was more or less excessive driving, or re-driving — a method of 



