320 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



object of their distant excursions into Bering sea, where they have 

 been known to be? Is it not reasonable to suppose that nursing 

 mothers require nourishment? And how else are the young sup- 

 ported? 



But here, again, suppose it were true that these excursions were not 

 made for the purpose of food. They are yet mode, and the danger of 

 their being slaughtered by pelagic sealers is as great as if the object 

 of their excursions were food. 



Sixth. Much space is devoted in this Counter Case to the subject of 

 the frequent finding of numerous dead pups; and here also conjecture 

 is abundantly resorted to. It is suggested that they may have been 

 killed by disease, or by the rush of other seals over them, or by the 

 waves of the sea, or by their mothers having been killed by being 

 driven to the hauling grounds and thus injured and prevented from 

 finding their way back to their young. But to what purpose is it to 

 suggest that a great variety of things may have happened, of no one 

 of which any proof is given 1 ? Doubtless it is true that some of the 

 young die from a variety of causes of which we know nothing, as is the 

 case with all animals. The question is, whether the slaughter of their 

 mothers by pelagic sealing is not a cause, and the principal cause of 

 this mortality. When we know that the mothers do habitually resort 

 to the sea, where they are killed in great numbers, when we know that 

 they have often been killed at long distances from the shore with their 

 breasts distended with milk, when we know that suckling is the natu- 

 ral and only mode of nourishment to the young, and when we know 

 that a number of the pups dead upon the islands are extremely emaci- 

 ated, and exhibit all the appearances of having died in consequence of 

 the loss of nourishment, the conclusion seems plain enough that their 

 mothers have been killed at sea and they starved in consequence and 

 no amount of conjecture can displace it. 



Seventh. It is said by way of argument against the allegation of a 

 property interest that the seals, although they return to the same gen- 

 eral breeding place, do not always return to the same island or to the 

 same place upon the same island. This may or may not be true; but of 

 what importance is it, when it appears that all tlie islands ever have 

 been, now are, and are likely to continue to be the property of one pro- 

 prietor, the United States Government? And if it were otherwise, if 

 there were many different proprietors of the different islands and of dif- 

 ferent places on the same islands, of what consequence would it be 



