CONTROL AND DOMESTICATION. 223 



I make these statements because I have hoard it said that the seals 

 are wild animals and can not he identified as belonging to any partic- 

 ular herd or rookery when off on the feeding grounds where they are 

 captured by the marine seal hunters. 



Every member of the entire sea herd of the island (except the new- 

 born pups in the first three or four weeks of their 



life) had, when I was there, and, I understand, s. M. Washburn, p. 155. 

 still has immediate money value; and the entire 



herd is, each season, as wholly and completely in the actual power and 

 possessive control of the employes of the lessees as my father's cattle 

 on his farm were in mine when I was a boy and he gave me charge of 

 them. The only thing to prevent the immediate conversion of the en- 

 tire herd into marketable skins, and so into cash, was the limit of the 

 catch imposed by the terms of lease, unless, that limit being removed, 

 the inhabitants were possessed of foresight and public spirit enough 

 to preserve the herd for their own future profit or the future public 

 good. 



The seal has many traits of a domestic animal, and his birthplace is 

 so certain a home for him that, in its habitable season, he does not 

 need to be hunted, but can be found there as regularly as a farmer's 

 cattle at night. To me it seems a pity to wastefully destroy his use- 

 ful race when pasturing in the great oceanic international common. 



When the seals are on the breeding grounds they are not easily 

 frightened unless they are too nearly approached, 



and even. then they will go but a short distance if Daniel Webster, p. 181. 

 the cause of their fright becomes stationary. 



I have often observed that the seals when on the islands do not take 

 fright easily at the presence of man; and the na- 

 tives go among them with impunity. They will Daniel Webster, p. 182. 

 go into a herd of seals on the hauling grounds and 



quietly separate them into as many divisions and subdivisions as is 

 necessary before driving them to the killing grounds. At the killing 

 grounds they are again divided into bunches or "pods" of twenty or 

 thirty each more readily than the same number of domestic animals 

 could be handled under the same circumstances. 



The bulls on the rookeries will not only stand their ground against the 

 approach of man, but will become the aggressors if disturbed. Pups 

 are tame and very playful when young, and, previous to 1891, when it 

 was the practice to kill three or four thousand for natives' food in No- 

 vember, thousands of them were picked up and handled to determine 

 the sex, for only the males were allowed to be killed. 



PROTECTION OF FEMALES. 



Page 150 of The Case. 



It was the uniform policy of the lessees to carefully preserve and pro 

 tect for breeding purposes all female seals; and, 



as their agent, I was instructed to exercise all Geo. R. Adams, p. 157. 

 possible care and caution for the j)reservation of 

 the female when driving or killing. 



Females were never driven, except in a few cases where a barren one 

 had hauled up with the bachelors, but I do not 

 think in ten thousand females there is one barren. chas - Bnjant,p. 8. 



