48 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



be suggested between these seals and the other animals, such as 

 deer, bees, wild geese, and wild swans, which appear by the authori- 

 ities referred to to be universally regarded as property so long as they 

 retain the animum revertendi f Will it be said that this animus is cre- 

 ated by man in the case of those animals, and in the seals is a natural 

 instinct? If this were true it would be unimportant. The essential 

 thing is that the art and industry of man should bring about the useful 

 result; and to this end human art, care and industry are as necessary and 

 as effective in the one case as in the others. If man did not choose to 

 practice this care and industry in respect to the seals, if he exhibited 

 no husbandry, but treated them as ivild animals, and attacked and killed 

 them as they sought the land, they would be driven away to 

 other haunts or be speedily exterminated. But it is not true that 

 the disposition to return is created by man. The habitual return 

 of the other animals mentioned is due to their natural instincts just 

 as much as that of the seals is to theirs. Many races of animals have 

 what may be called homes. It is natural instinct which prompts them 

 to return to the spot where they rear their young or can find their food 

 or a secure place of repose. What man does in any of these iustances, 

 and as much in one as in another, is, to act upon this instinct and make 

 it available to secure the return. If the seals will return to the same 

 place and voluntarily put themselves in the power of man with less 

 effort on his part than in the case of the other animals, it shows only 

 that they are by nature less wild and less inclined to fly from the 

 presence of man. In the case of the bees, for instance, it is plain that 

 their nature is no more changed by man than that of the seals. They 

 are as wild when dwelling in an artificial hive as when they are in the 

 woods; nor does man feed them; they gain their food from flowers 

 which, for the most part, belong to persons other than their masters. 

 Will it be said that the wanderings of the seals are very distant? Of 

 what consequence is this so long as the return is certain 1 ? Bees 

 wander very long distances. Will it be insisted that it makes any 

 difference on the question of property whether a cow seal goes five, or 

 a hundred miles in the sea to obtain food to enable her to nourish her 

 offspring on the shore? Probably the long duration of migration to the 

 south in the winter will be urged as a striking distinction between the 

 case of the seals and the other instances; but what difference can this 

 make if the animus revertendi remains, as it unquestionably does, and 

 the same beneficial results are secured ? 



