167 



selections for sliuiglitcr, unless lie was awarded tlie riglit of pvoj)- 

 erty in respect to such deer. Out of this condition of things arises the 

 rule, to which I have adverted, that whenever, by the art and industry 

 of man, useful wild animals come so far under control that they can be 

 and are so dealt with by him, that he may carry on this species of 

 husbandry with them, take their whole annual product for human con- 

 sumption and yet preserve the stock, he has, by universal jurisprudence, 

 a property in them, and when he can not, or does not do this, he has no 

 right of property. This is the true teaching of the cases and authorities 

 to which reference has been made. The property which they recognize 

 is that most approjiriately described by Blackstone as projierty ^^er 

 inclustriam. Expressed in its simplest and most general form, the truth^ 

 which the authorities cited enforce, is that whenever any useful thing, 

 not already approp}-iated, is dependent for its existence on the art and 

 industry of man — whenever man can truly say of a particular useful 

 thing that it is the product of his care and labor, or would not exist 

 without his care and labor — then he may claim that thing as his prop- 

 erty. 



Do not all these conditions exist in the case of the fur-seals fre- 

 quenting the Pribilof Islands? Are they not met more certainly in 

 respect to these animals than in the case of those wild animals which 

 the authorities uniformly declare may be ai^propriated by and become 

 the property of man'? Are not these fur seals, when on the Pribilof 

 Islands, so comi)letcly in the power of the United States that the entire 

 herd could be taken in anyone breeding season? Is it not due to the 

 care, self-denial and supervision of the United States that these ani- 

 mals regularly return, at stated times, to those islands, and remain 

 there, for such long periods, and under such circumstances, that a 

 proper proportion of their increase can be readily taken for purposes 

 of revenue and commerce without at all endangering the race? Must 

 not the race perish — would it not long since have perished from the 

 earth — except for the care and self-denial practised towards it by 

 the United States'? Is it not beyond dispute that pelagic sealing is 

 certainly and rapidly destructive of this race? Can this race be 

 preserved for the world unless it is recognized as the property of that 

 nation which, alone of all the nations, can protect it from extermina- 

 tion? The care a? id labor which the United States exerts m respect 

 to these animals is to withdraw the Pribilof Islands from all other pos- 



