SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE. 267 



the pup can not swim, and does not learn so to do until it is six or eight 

 weeks of age. It is therefore utterly impossible for a pup to be born in 

 the water and live. I have noticed that when a pup of this age is put 

 in the water it seemed to have no idea of the use of its flippers, and 

 was very much terrified. A pup is certainly for the first six or eight 

 weeks of its life a land animal, and is in no sense amphibious. During 

 this period also a pup moves very much like a young kitten, using its 

 hind flippers as feet. A mother seal will at once recognize her pup by 

 its cry, hobbling over a thousand bleating pups to reach her own, and 

 every other approaching her, save this one little animal, she will drive 

 away. * * * A pup, however, seems not to distinguish its mother 

 from the other females about it. 



William Healey Dall,a scientist whose studies were completed under 

 Prof. Louis Agassiz, at Cambridge, in the year 1863, and who has been 

 since that time engaged in scientific work, gave the result of his per- 

 sonal examination made during the several years that he visited St. 

 George Island and the Aleutian Islands. His opportunities to famil- 

 iarize himself with aquatic seal life were excellent and are fully detailed 

 in his deposition on pages 23 and 24 of the Appendix to the Case of the 

 United States. He says: 



From my knowledge of natural history and from my observations of 

 seal life, I am of the opinion that it would be impossible for the young 

 seals to be brought forth and kept alive in the water. When it is the 

 habit of an animal to give birth to its young upon the laud, it is con- 

 trary to biologic teaching and common sense to suppose they could 

 successfully bring them forth in the water. It does not seem to me at 

 all likely that a mother would suckle any pup other than her own, for 

 I have repeatedly seen a female select one pup from a large group and 

 pay no attention to the solicitations of others. Pups require the nour- 

 ishment from their mothers for at least three or four months after their 

 birth, and would perish if deprived of the same. 



I have had ample opportunity to form an opinion in regard to the 

 effect upon the herd of killing female seals. The female brings forth a 

 single offspring annually, and hence the repair of the loss by death is 

 not rapid. It is evident that the injury to the herd from the killing of 

 a single female, that is, the producer, is far greater than from the death 

 of the male, as the seal is polygamous in habit. The danger of the 

 herd, therefore, is just in proportion to the destruction of female life. 

 Killing in the open waters is peculiarly destructive to this animal. No 

 discrimination of sex in the water is possible, the securing of the prey 

 when killed is under the best of circumstances uncertain, and as the 

 period of gestation is at least eleven months and of nursing three or 

 four months, the death of the female at any time means the destruction 

 of two, herself and the foetus; or when nursing, three — herself, the 

 nursing pup, and the foetus. All killing of females is a menace to the 

 herd, and as soon as such killing reaches the point — as it inevitably 

 must if permitted to continue — where the annual increase will not make 

 good the yearly loss, then the destruction of the herd will be equally 

 rapid and certain, regarded from a commercial standpoint, though a few 

 individuals might survive. 



Karp Buterin, a native of St. Paul Island, on which island he had 

 lived up to the time of making his deposition, when he was 39 years of 



