46 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 



proceed. My learned friend Mr. Robinson, I think, entered upon this 

 yesterday, but I shoukl like to read this passage: 



80. To assume that the killing of auimals of the female sex is in itself reprehensi- 

 ble or inhuman, is to make an assumption affecting all cases where animals are pre- 

 served or domesticated by man. Most civilized nations, in accordance with the 

 dictates of humanity as well as those of self-interest, make legislative provision for 

 the protection of wild animals during the necessary periods of bringing forth and of 

 rearing their young; but the killing of females is nuiversally recognized as permis- 

 sible if only to preserve the normal proportion of the sexes. This is the case in all 

 instances of game preservation and stock raising, and iu the particular example of 

 the fur-seal, it is numerically demonstrable that, in maintaining a constant total of 

 seals, a certain proportion of females should be annually available for killing. The 

 killing of gravid females must, however, be deprecated as specifically injurious, and 

 in any measures proposed for the regulation of seal hunting should receive sjiecial 

 attention. 



Then they proceed to deal with the allegation of the percentage of 

 seals lost at sea; and in paragraph 82 — I read this yesterday and I 

 therefore will merely summarize wliat they say upon it — that the state- 

 ments are very vagae; that the statistics or figures given are liopelessly 

 confused; and confused in this way, that the number of seals fired at 

 is confounded with the number killed, and in other cases it is often 

 estimated that the number of rounds of ammunition disposed of repre- 

 sents the total number of seals that are actually killed. 



I uuike one observation in that connection. I think one cannot but 

 be struck in this matter that while they were endeavoring to show, and 

 succeeded in showing, that a great many seals fired at were not cap- 

 tured, they do not show that the seals so fired at were either killed or 

 seriously wounded. In other words in a great many instances, they do 

 not show that they were hit at all. I have been struck also with this 

 fact it is true that the specific gravity of the seal taken as an animal, is 

 greater than the specific gravity of the water, and therefore that the seal 

 will sink; but I notice that some of the witnesses point out a curious 

 fact worth noticing in passing, that when the seal is hit iu the head, 

 which is where it ought to be hit by scientific marksmen, the effect is 

 that its head goes down first in the water, and in that way the air which 

 is already in its respiratory organs is preserved and so there is a certain 

 buoyancy given to it and it will float for a short space of time. 



I see no reason to doubt that scientifically at all; but that is not the 

 point I was going to make allusion to. Where there is no such air in 

 the respiratory organs to afford buoyancy to the seal, it will sink if its 

 specific gravity is greater than that of the water. That may be con- 

 ceded; but after a certain time, as we all know, the i)rocess of decom- 

 position goes on, which thus occasions a fresh principle of buoyancy in 

 the dead animal, just as it is in the case of a human bodj^ In the case 

 of a person who has suffered death from drowning the body sinks, dis- 

 appears; but after the lapse of a certain time the body again floats, 

 ^hen that process of decomposition has gone on, and in that way the 

 principle of buoyancy is illustrated. So with much inferior snbjects. 

 Dead cats and dead dogs, as we know, sink in the first instance, but 

 come to the surface again. So it onght to be, and so it must be. There 

 is no natural reason in the world why it should not be in the case of 

 the seals. The process of decomposition, of course, is slower where the 

 water is colder; but it goes on in the summer months. If this allega- 

 tion of this tremendous loss of life by killing and not securing seals 

 were true, one would expect to have some account of the presence of 

 large numbers of floating dead seals over the surface of the water. I 

 do not find there is any substantial evidence pointing in that direction 

 at all; and I cannot therefore but think that the evidence on this point 

 as to loss in that way is considerably exaggerated. 



