ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 65 



Then: 



I have found that the seals killctT (says MolovedoflF) in May and early June were fat 

 and that their stomachs were full of food principally cod lish, and that later iu the 

 season they were poor and had nothing iu their stomachs. 



Then Mr. Redpath : 



Young males killed in May and June when examined are found to he in prime con- 

 dition and their stomachs are filled with fish — principally codfish, hut those killed 

 later in the season are found to he poor and lean and their stomachs empty, which 

 shows that the males rarely leave the islands for food during the summer months. 



Mr. Webster is to the same effect, and then he i^roceedKS to express an 

 opinion about the females going out to feed which I will now proceed 

 to consider. 



Senator Morgan. — Is tliere any evidence that you have seen contra- 

 dicting the statement you have just read. 



Sir Charles Russell. — No not that I am aware of. There are state- 

 ments scattered here and there which say they do not feed much which 

 wonld imply therefore that they feed a little — during the latter period 

 of their sojourn on the Island they do begin to feed but not in the months 

 I have mentioned. 



Lord Hannen. — The probability is when the sexual excitement begins 

 they are provided with a greater supply of fat as in the case of the old 

 ones, and that probably arises at the same time — the increase of fat in 

 the males — which serves them as a reserve force. 



Sir Charles Eussell. — It may be. It obviously is so in the case 

 of the older males, but these observations that I have been just readiug 

 do not apply to the older males. 



Lord Hannen. — Xo, it was apropos of that I made the observation 

 that at the same time that the sexual passions w^ere roused there is a 

 greater supply of reserve and fat. 



Sir Charles Russell. — And the real question is that nature having 

 made that extraordinary provision in the case of males is there any 

 reason for supposing that nature has not made a similar provision in 

 the case of the females. That is a question that is not admitted, and I 

 will call attention to the evidence in a moment about it. But it is a 

 very remarkable thing that in all the seals that have been killed you 

 will find some reference made to theni in what I am about to state, that 

 what is stated as true of the males is true of the females — that until 

 you come to the end of the period when their nursing operations are 

 nearly over then apparently they take again to food. 



I will deal with the females in a moment, but there is also a passage 

 in the earlier Report reprinted in 1881 what we have been calling the 

 brown book report, of Mr. Elliott bearing on the same subject; and he 

 does not restrict it, though I do not say he does not mean to restrict it 

 (as a matter of fact he does not) to sex. He says: 



I have examined the stomachs of hundreds which were driven np and killed imme- 

 diately after their arrival in the s^jring, near the village; I have the word of the 

 natives here, who have seen hundreds of thousands of them opened during the 

 slaughtering-seasons past, hut in no single case has anything ever been found, other 

 than the bile and ordinary secretions of healthy organs of this class, with the marked 

 exception of finding in every one a snarl or cluster of worms, from the size of a wal- 

 nut to a hunch as large as a man's list. Fasting apparently has no effect upon the 

 worms, for on the rare occasion, and perhaps the last one that will ever occur of 

 killing three or four hundred old hulls late in the fall to supply the natives with 

 canoe skins, I was present, and again examined their paunches, finding the same 

 ascaridcB within. They Avere lively in these empty stomachs, and tlioir presence, I 

 think, gives some reason for the habit which the old bulls have (and others do not) 

 pf swallowing small water- worn bowlders, the stones in some of the stomachs weigh- 

 ing half a pound apiece, in othertj much smaller. In one paunch I found over tiv^ 



B S, PT XIV 5 



