154 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 



1892 of people who were resident upon tlie Islands in the years 18S5 

 and 1886 to say tliat they noticed the increase of dead pn))s. They do 

 not give the place. They did not localize where these pnps are found. 

 They make no connection of any sort or kind between the two particu- 

 lar rookeries to which the evidence is most particularly addressed on 

 both sides : they simply make the statement ex 2)ost facto, their affidavits 

 being taken in April 1892, that they remember that during the years 

 1884 to 1890 they found that there were more of these dead pups than 

 usual. You will find that collected together in page 406 of the Collated 

 Testimony. The first is Clark : 



Dead pup seals whicli seem to have starved to death grew very numerous in the 

 rookeries these later years. 



That is up to 1889. 



And I noticed that driving the hatQhelor seals for killing, as we started them up 

 from the beach, that many small puj^s half starved, apparently motlierless had wan- 

 dered away from the breeding grounds, and became mixed with tlie killable seals. 

 The natives called my attention to these waifs saying that it did not use to be so, 

 and that the mothers were dead, otherwise they would be upon the breeding 

 grounds. 



That is an affidavit made in the May of 1892. 



Then Hansson who made his affidavit on the 30th April says: 



There were a good many dead pups on the rookeries every year I was on the 

 island. 



He was there from 1886 to 1891.— 



And they seemed to grow more numerous from year to year. There may not, in fact, 

 have been more of them, because the rookeries were all the time growing smaller and 

 the dead pups in the latter years were more numerous in proportion to the live ones. 



ThenMr. Mclntyre: 



The seals were apparently subject to no diseases; the pups were always fat and 

 healthy and dead ones very rarely seen on or about the rookeries prior to 1884. Upon 

 my return to the islands, in 1886, I was told by my assistants, and the natives that a 

 very large number of pups had iierished the preceding season, a ])art of them dying 

 iipon the islands and others being washed ashore, all seeming to hu\'e starved to 

 death. The same thing occurred in 1886 and in each of the following years to and 

 including 1889, Even before I leit the islands in August 1886, 1887, and 1888, I saw 

 hundreds of halfstarved, bleating emaciated pups wandering aimlessly about in 

 search of their dams and presenting a most pitiable appearance. 



Then Morgan is the last of them : 



But facts came under my observation that soon led me to what I believe to he the 

 true cause of destruction. For instance during the period of my resideuce on St. 

 George Island, down to the year 1884, there were always a number of dead pups, the 

 number of which I can not give exactly, as it varies from year, to year and was 

 dependent upon accidents or the destructiveness of storms young seals do not know 

 how to swim from birth, nor do they learn how for six weeks or two mouths after 

 birth, and therefore are at the mercy of the waves during stormy weather, but from 

 the year 1884 down to the period when I left St. George's Island — 



I hope the Tribunal will notice this because it is agreed that there is 

 no abnormal pups in St. George's Island in 1891 or 1892 — 



there was a marked increase in the number of dead pup seals amounting perhaps to 

 a trebling of the numbers observed in former years, so that I would estimate the 

 number of dead pups in the year 1887 at about live or seven thousaud as a maximum 

 I also noticed during my last two or three years among the number of dead pups an 

 increase of at least 70 per cent of those which were emaciated and poor, and in my 

 judgmeut they died from want of nourishment, their mothers having been killed 

 while away from the island feeding, because it is a fact that pups drowned or kilh d 

 by accidents were almost invariably fat. Learning further through the London 

 sales of the increase in the pelagic sealiug, it became my tirm conviction that the 

 constant increase in the number of dead pups and the decrease in the number of 



