200 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



far within the truth, may be taken as one in every four. The number 

 68,000 represents, therefore, three-fourths only of the total killed, which 

 would thus amount to 68,000 pins 22,666, or 90,666. Of this number, ob- 

 serving the same caution in statement, at least three-fourths arc females, 

 which would thus number 68,000, or the number actually recovered. 

 How many of these may be barren females, there is no means of as- 

 certaining. We have no reason to suppose that the number is con- 

 siderable. 



The question whether it would take a long or short period to sweep 

 awav the herd if 68,000 females were actually taken from them each 

 year -furnishes its own answer. The same annual subtraction from a 

 constantly diminishing sum would be an accelerating progress of de- 

 struction which would soon complete its work, even if all taking of seals 

 on the land were prohibited. The only cause tending to moderate the 

 rapidity of the destruction would be the increasing difficulty of secur- 

 ing the annual 68,000 with the diminishing number of females: but as 

 this number diminished, the draft woidd be proportionately larger; and 

 even this check upon the destruction would be done away with by the 

 increasing force employed in the pelagic slaughter, so long as the pur- 

 suit held out a chance of profit; and the constantly increasing price of 

 skins — the sure result of a diminution of the supply in the market — 

 would help to stimulate the prosecution of the work. 



It is no longer matter of wonder that the much smaller pelagic catch, 

 amounting in 1882 to 12,000, and annually increasing until it amounted 

 in 1887 to 37,500, ] had produced an effect which became distinctly man- 

 t ai the breeding places in 1889 and 1890, by the difficulty of finding 

 regular number of 100,000 youug males for the purpose of slaughter, 

 which led to an order to arrest the further killing. It would be there 

 I Lat the invasion upon the numbers of the herd would be first observable. 

 No one could tell from any survey of t he whole herd, stretched out over in 

 the aggregate some in miles in extent, and presenting differing appear- 

 ances from time to time, that the numbers had diminished until the 

 diminution had reached an advanced stage; but any considerable 

 decrease in the number of breeding females, involving, as it would, a 

 decrease of births, would soon become manifest in the crucial practical 

 lest of selecting the quota of killable young males. 2 



But counsel for Great Britain may protest that it is not to the pur- 



i Report of Brit. Com., p. 207. 



B Iicjjurt of Am. Coin., Case of the United States, pp. 341-315. 



