172 



arctlic conditions of advance in civilization in tlicarts and sciences, in 

 literatnre, and religion. For comnnmd over nature differentiates 

 the civilized man from tlie savage. * * * It appears, hence, how 

 accurate is the common phrase which calls thrift 'saving.' Economists 

 favor such other words as 'abstinence,' deferred 'enjoj'ment,' and the 

 like; but to 'save' expresses the primary idea that something has been 

 sav^ed from the destruction to which mere animal instinct would devote 

 it. In such salvage lies the progress of the human species from sav- 

 agery to godhead. By how much has been thus saved has the salva- 

 tion, material, mental, and moral, of the race been achieved." Bliss- 

 ard's Ethics and Usury^ 1892, p. 26 et seq. "The origin of all capital," 

 says another writer, "is abstinence, and the reward of this absti- 

 uence is profit." Perry^s Introduction to Political Economy, p. 115. 



If it be said that a diflBculty in the way of awarding to the United 

 States a right of property in these seals is theimpossibility of identify- 

 ing any particular body of seals as frequenting or habitually resorting 

 to the Pribilof Islands, the answer is that no such description of the 

 situation is justified by the evidence before us. It may be that here 

 and there, in the great ocean separatingthe American and Asiaticcoasts 

 may be found stray, scattered fur seals, of which it might be difficult 

 to say, while they are in the M^ater, and not immediately under the eye, 

 that they belong to a particular herd of northern fur seals, just as it 

 would be difficult to identify a wild pigeon as belonging to a particular 

 flock, or individual bees as belonging to a particular swarm hived at a 

 named \)la(,'C. But such facts can not affect the principle involved in 

 such cases. The evidence is overwhelming that the migratory routes 

 of the northern fur seals frequenting the islands on the Asiatic and 

 Japan coasts are separated by more than 800 miles from the migration 

 routes of the fur seals habitually resorting to Bering Sea and frequenting 

 the Pribilof Islands. Tliere is no appreciable intermingling of the Pri- 

 bilof seals with other fur seals of the same general species. If there are 

 any excei)tions to this rule they are so rare and relate to so few seals as 

 to be of no consequence in the inquiry whether the fur seals frequenting 

 or habitually resorting to the Pribilof Islands do not constitute, substan- 

 tially, a collective body or herd separate and distinct from every other 

 herd of the same species. That they do constitute a separate and dis- 

 tinct herd is so clearly established that a statement to the contrary 

 might well cause surprise to any one at all familiar with the evidence 

 submitted to us, or who is able to consider it without regard to special 



