62 



incidental i*emarks as illustrate the aspect of the island in 

 point of the ahundance of the amphibious carnivora, prior to 

 the hostile invasion of man. 



It seems hardly credible that wanton apathy should have 

 permitted a wholesale extermination at all seasons of so 

 valuable an article ot commerce ; but true it is that no steps 

 appear ever to have been taken to afford protection to the 

 various species of seal during the fence season, and the 

 inevitable result of so persistently ungenerous a persecu- 

 tion, has been their almost total disappearance from localities 

 once abounding in them by thousands. 



A correct foreboding was expressed by a writer in the 

 Hobart Town Gazette, March 25th, 1826, in the following 

 terms : — " It is evident that the Legislative Government must 

 enact a law for the fishery of seals at improper seasons, else this 

 most valuable source of colonial export will soon be lost. There 

 are two species of seal in these seas. The early kind brings 

 forth its young from the 25th November to the latter end of 

 December, and the reefs and banks should be left undisturbed 

 until May followin^:, when the increase will be grown up and 

 the skins well furred. The black seal, which is the most 

 valuable, is a month later. 



" The unthinking sealers harass these useful animals at all 

 seasons, and the consequence is that many reefs are deserted, 

 and inferior skins have been procured from animals too young, 

 and imposed upon the merchants." 



I cannot find that action was taken upon this remonstrance. 

 The seals appear then to have been still abundant, and a 

 prompt interference might not have been too late. The skins 

 alone were valued at 5s. each, and a case is quoted in which 

 300 cubs had perished on one bank alone through the un- 

 timely destruction of the dams. 



It is to be regretted that we have no reliable description of 

 all the different species of seal once inhabiting the coasts of 

 this island, and of those in Bass' Straits. That the number 

 was more considerable than is generally imagined may be in- 

 ferred from an expression occurring in Lieut. Colonel Collins's 

 History of New South Wales, conveying observations made 

 by Mr. Bass in the course of one of his earliest explorations, 

 to the effect that : *' The seals appeared to branch off into 

 various species. He did not recollect to have seen them 

 precisely alike upon any two islands in the Strait. Most of 

 them were of that kind called by the sealers hair seals, but 

 they differed in the t^hape of the body, or of the head, the 

 situation of the fore fins, the colour, and very commonly in 

 the voice, as if each island spoke a peculiar language." These 

 are clearly specific differences; and not such as might be 



