204 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



masters if they had not sedulously avoided stating the sex of the ani- 

 mals that they killed. 



There is one, and one explanation only, of this, and that explanation 

 makes the stories above quoted plausible. The pelagic sealers were 

 engaged in hunting nursing mothers on the feeding grounds, where 

 those animals are found in large numbers. The decrease proved, and, 

 indeed, admitted to exist (see Joint Report), had not yet been so great 

 as to be manifest to those sealers who were so fortunate as to fall in 

 with a number of females either intent upon finding the food necessary 

 to produce a flow of milk or sleeping on the surface of the water after 

 feeding. 



And here we may note another illustration of the thesis and its ad- 

 vocacy. Having satisfied themselves that pelagic sealing rather ope- 

 rated to increase the supply of seals, they remembered that the killing 

 of young males was objectionable and likely to result iu extermination, 

 and thereupon discovered the fact that "a meeting of natives was held" 

 at which the aborigines unanimously expressed the opinion that the 

 seals had diminished and would continue to diminish from year to year 

 (an opinion, too plain, we think, for argument), but they at once assign 

 the reason, which is not the killing of many females, but the extraor- 

 dinary fact that "all the male seals had been slaughtered without allow- 

 ing any to come to maturity upon the breeding grounds" (Sec. 438). 



Having thus proved that the seals were in a nourishing condition of 

 increase, and that they were decreasing in an alarming degree, the 

 conclusion is reached that the decrease is on the land and the increase 

 in the water: 



The general effect of these changes in the habits of the seals is to 

 minimize the number to be seen at any one time on the breeding islands, 

 while the average number to be found at sea is, at least proportionately, 

 though perhaps in face of a general decrease in the number of seals, not 

 absolutely increased (Sec. 445 of British Commissioners' Report). 



Would it be irrelevant to inquire what was the "summer habitat" of 

 the numerous seals slaughtered by Capt. Warren, Capt. Leary, and 

 Capt. Cox? Were they not all of the Pribilof family? Did not the 

 Commissioners who quoted Capt. Cox to the effect that he had, no doubt 

 in true sportsmanlike fashion, with a shotgun, killed 250 seals a day 

 for four days, know that the enormous majority of these were nursing 

 mothers, whose pups were starving at home? 



