118 



And so it is in respect of tlie virility of tlie bulls, a fact that would 

 probably defy the movst exact scientific examination to prove, is stated 

 with sublime confidence by Prof. Elliott and other like guessers. He 

 finds the bulls at peace on the rookeries, and though they are not 

 irritated by being crowded together as formerly, he concludes that 

 because they have their domestic enjoyments without the necessity of 

 jealous warfare that they have lost their virility. Among all polyg- 

 amous animals endowed with fighting capacity nature provides for 

 destroying the excess of males by the wars they wage upon each other. 

 Breeders of animals reach this result without the necessity of permit- 

 ting them to fight and kill each other. It requires very simple reason- 

 ing to reach the conclusion that, if this waste of physical energy is 

 saved to breeding males by their separation from each other and the 

 suppression of their warfare, that it will supply the virility to meet a 

 greater demand upon their powers of procreation. 



Ko dissections seem to have been made of dead pups found on the 

 islands on one occasion to ascertain whether they had died of starva- 

 tion or of disease, or were swept off by tempests and drowned and 

 were thrown upon the coasts in " winrows" by the waves of the sea. 

 Yet each witness gives his opinion as to what killed the pups with as 

 much confidence as if he really knew what he was talking about. 



The eftbrt to account for the disparity of 81,000 killable seals on the 

 islands between 1889 and 1890 by any of these mere conjectures is 

 founded upon this sort of testimony and can not break the force of the 

 fact that in 1890 the pelagic hunters got 51,655 seals, while on the 

 islands, where 102,017 killable seals were taken in 1889, only 21,238 

 could be found the next season " by scraping the rookeries," as Lord 

 Hannen observed. 



The crucial test of the necessity of forbidding pelagic sealing with 

 firearms in parts of the ocean where seals abound is the fact that it 

 results necessarily and without doubt in the killing of great numbers 

 of female seals, because of their disposition to sleep when gravid. 

 They are more easily approached than the males, and the result is the 

 destruction of a nmch larger proportion of females than of males. 

 The encouragement of this indiscriminate killing of females, or its tol- 

 eration, will establish a practice that violates every idea of the protec- 

 tion and preservation of the species. It legitimates a war upon the 

 race that can not be restrained. 



If we first deny to this race of valuable and docile animals (that have 



