ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C, M. P. 221 



Senator Morgan. — Before you approach that point, Sir Charles, I 

 should like to make a susgestiou. Counsel on both sides in this case 

 seem to me to have neglected a very considerable and definite part of 

 the evidence upon the subject of a necessity that nature has imposed 

 on all seals, to land during- some i)ortion of the season for the purpose 

 of undergoing this very process of shedding their hair. The evidence 

 to my mind is convincing that that is just as much a necessity of the 

 nature of the seal as the other instincts to which you refer; and tliat 

 therefore it is that every seal is bonnd by a compulsion of nature to 

 visit the shores during this stagey season, as they call it, when the coat 

 is being shed. That impression having been made on my mind, I call 

 attention to it merely tor the purpose of inviting discussion. 



Sir Charles Russell. — With great deference, I am not surprised 

 that my learned friends on the other side have not dwelt upon that. I 

 think that view is not well founded. It does not appear to be so, and 

 the evidence to which I have directed attention points in a different 

 direction— that, though this stagey operation may be gone through in 

 the case* of each seal every year, yet it is not necessary for the seal to 

 come to land. The probability is that the operation is more gradual in 

 the case of those when they do not land than when they do — in other 

 words, the evidence rather points to the fact that they have been on 

 land than to the fact that they are going on land. 



Senator Morgan. — In order to get tlirough with it — at all events it 

 has jnade that impression on my mind, and especially that Report of 

 Mr. Elliott to which you refer. 



Sir Charles Russell. — We will look at it again in view of the 

 intimation that you have been good enough, Sir, to make. 



In reference to this difliculty, which points to the impossibility, or 

 impracticability, or both, of identifii ation, all they say about it is on 

 page 49 of their written Argument: 



The difficulty of identification may be suggested, bnt it does not exist. There is 

 no comniingling witli the Russian herd. Every fur-seal on the North-West coast 

 belongs indisputably to the Alaskan herd. 



That is statemient, but it is not proof. On page 232 they say: 



The marked differences between the Alaskan and the Russian seals are such as to 

 be readily and plainly discernible to persons familiar vrith the two herds and their 

 characteristics. This, once established, would naturally prove that there is no com- 

 mingling of the respective herds. 



We have shown by the evidence which I have read (which I can see 

 no reason to doubt, though it is for the Tribunal to judge) that there is 



commingling. 

 985 I am now going to another point; namely the absence of these 



seals for a long period of their lives from the Islands. I refer to 

 the evidence of Mr. Bryant in volnme I of the Appendix to the British 

 Counter < ase, page 125. Mr. Bryant is a gentleman who has been 

 employed by the United States before to report on this question; and, 

 on page 125, we have put side by side a comi)arison of the statements 

 made by this gentleman in his monograph of 1880, written at the instance 

 of the United States Government, and the reports and evidence which 

 he gave from 1869 to 1870. 



Mr. Justice Harlan. — Which side of that page do you refer to? 



Sir Charles Russell. — For this purjiose, to both. He differs, you 

 will see, as to the duration of the absence; but in each case he admits 

 that it is for a long time. 



In 1876 he said : 



About the 20th of Jnly the great body of the previous year's pnps arrive and 

 occupy the slopes with the younger class of males, and they continue to be mixed 



