PROPERTY IN THE ALASKAN SEAL HERD. 49 



The difficulty of identification may be suggested, but it does not ex- 

 ist. There is no commingling with the Russian herd. Every fur-seal 

 on the Northwest coast belongs indisputably to the Alaskan herd. But 

 if there were any such supposed difficulty, it would matter nothing. If 

 a man, without authority, kills cattle wandering without guard over 

 the boundless plains of the interior of the United States, he is a plain 

 trespasser. It might be difficult for any particular owner to make out 

 a case of damages against him, but he would be none the less a tres- 

 passer for that. If a man kills a reclaimed swan or goose innocently, 

 and believing it to be wild, he is, indeed, excusable, and if there were 

 different herds of fur-seals, some of them property and others not, it 

 might be difficult to show that one who killed seals at sea had notice 

 that they were property; but there are no herds of fur-seals in the 

 North Pacific which are not in the same condition with those of Alaska. 



It does not, therefore, appear that the differences observable between 

 the fur-seals and those other animals commonly designated as wild 

 which are held by the municipal law of all nations to be the subject of 

 ownership, are material, and the conclusion is fully justified that if the 

 latter are property, the former must also be property. 



But there is another and broader line of inquiry, by following which 

 all doubt upon this point may be removed. What are the grounds and 

 reasons upon which the institution of property stands ? Why is it 

 that society chooses to award, through the instrumentality of the law, 

 a right of property in anything? Why is it that it makes any dis- 

 tinction in this respect between wild and tame animals; and why is it 

 that, as to animals commonly designated as wild, it pronounces some 

 to be the subjects of property and denies that quality to others'? It 

 can not be that these important but differing determinations are founded 

 upon arbitrary reasons. Nor does the imputation to some of these ani- 

 mals of what is termed the animus revertendi, or the fact that they 

 have a habit of returning which evidences that intent, of themselves, 

 explain anything. They would both be wholly unimportant unless 

 they were significant of some weighty social aud economic considerations 

 arising out of imperious social necessities. If we knew what these 

 reasons were, we might no longer entertain even a doubt upon the 

 question whether the Alaskan seals are the subjects of property. If it 

 should appear upon inquiry that every reason upon which bees, or deer, 

 or pigeons, or wild geese, aud swans are held to be property requires 

 the same determination in respect to the Alaskan seals, the differences 

 14749 4 



