42 ARGUMENT OP THE UNITED STATES. 



ference with the seals which would tend to make its establishment 

 impossible or difficult. 



The proposition which the undersigned will first lay down and en- 

 deavor to maintain is that the United States have, by reason of the 

 nature and habits of the seals and their ownership of the breeding 

 grounds to which the herds resort, and irrespective of the established 

 industry above mentioned, a property interest in those herds as well 

 while they are in the high seas as upon the land. 



It is first to be observed that although the established doctrines of 

 municipal law may be properly invoked as affording light and informa- 

 tion upon the subject, the question is not to be determined by those 

 doctrines. Questions respecting property in lands, or movable things 

 which have a fixed situs within the territorial limits of a nation are, 

 indeed, to be determined exclusively by the municipal law of that na- 

 tion; but the municipal law can not determine whether movable things 

 like animals are, while they are in the high seas, the property of one 

 nation as against all others. If, indeed, it is determined that such an- 

 imals have a situs upon the land, notwithstanding their visits to, and 

 migration in the sea, it may then be left to the power which has dominion 

 over such land to determine whether such animals are property; but 

 the question whether they have this situs must be resolved by interna- 

 tional law T . 



The position taken on the part of Great Britain is, not that the seals 

 belong to her, but that they do not belong to any nation or to any men; 

 that they are res communes, oil res null ins; in other words, that they are 

 not the subject of property, and are consequently open to pursuit and 

 capture on the high seas by the citizens of any nation. This position 

 is based upon the assertion that they belong to the class of wild ani- 

 mals, animals ferae, naturae, and that these are not the subject of owner- 

 ship. Oil the other hand, it is insisted on the part of the United States 

 that the terms wild and tame, ferae and domitce, naturae, are not suffi- 

 ciently precise for a legal classification of animals in respect to the 

 question of property; that it is open to doubt,iu many cases, whether an 

 animal should be properly designated as wild or tame, and that the as- 

 signment of an animal to the one class rather than to the other is by no 

 means decisive of the question whether it is to be regarded as prop- 

 erty. In the view of the United States, while the words ivild and 

 tame describe sufficiently for the purposes of common speech the nature 

 and habits of animals, and indicate generally whether they are or 



