SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE. 271 



slaughter are mainly, if not wholly, females, as to forbid contradiction. 

 We accordingly find that the British Commissioners make this admis- 

 sion: " It is undoubtedly true that a considerable proportion of the seals 

 taken at sea are females, as all seals of Mllable size are killed without 

 discrimination of sex v (Sec. 78). It is true that they hasten to add that 

 this disproportion is due in part to the persistent killing of young 

 males on land. Possibly this may be true. Undoubtedly if the 

 poachers found killable males as well as gravid females, they would 

 slaughter both and the disproportion would be less marked. But the 

 Commissioners do not pretend that the absolute number of females 

 killed would be any smaller. The pelagic hunter would kill them all 

 with indiscriminate impartiality. How the situation would be helped 

 by this is not stated, although it may show how the scope of the busi- 

 ness might be enlarged. This curiosity is stimulated, but not satisfied, 

 by the admission that their disproportion is in part explained as 

 stated; it might have been just to the Tribunal to state what else 

 might be said to throw light upon the subject. 



The cows, while suckling, go to sea for food and sometimes to dis- 

 tances as great as 100 to 200 miles, and are during such excursions 

 exposed to capture by pelagic sealers (see Case of the United States, 

 p. 115). The statement in the Case to this effect is borne out by the 

 testimony and by fully substantiated facts. 



The vagueness of the statement made by the British Commissioners 

 fails to conceal the evident intent to create the impression that the 

 females, like the males, may live and nurse their young for a long time 

 without food. In section 307 of their Eeport this language is used: 



It is very generally assumed that the female, on* thus beginning to 

 leave the rookery ground, at once resumes her habit of engaging in 

 the active quest for food, and though this would appear to be only 

 natural, particularly in view of the extra drain ja^duced by the de- 

 mands of the young, it must be remembered that, with scarcely any 

 exception, the stomachs of even the bachelor seals killed upon the 

 islands are found void of food, and that all seals resorting to the islands 

 seem, in a great degree, to share in a common abstinence. 



The concession of an extra drain upon a nursing female is generously 

 followed up by the statement " that it may be considered certain that 

 after a certain period the females begin to seek such food as can be 

 obtained." It is then stated that "there is a very general belief among 

 the natives, both of the Pribilof and Commander islands, to the effect 

 that the females do not leave the land to feed while engaged in suckling 



