324 ORAL ARGUMENT OF FREDERICK R. COUDERT, ESQ. 



permit any pup to suckle it, this fact would ouly be a mitigation, but 

 not a cure, for the trouble ; because Nature supplies just enough. There 

 is no reason to suppose that she supplies an excess. If there are 10,000 

 mothers nourishing 10,000 pups, and there is only sufficient sustenance 

 in those 10,000 mothers for those 10,000 pups, if 5,000 of those mothers 

 are killed, suffering and death must ensue because only 5,000 will 

 receive sufficient nourishment. Of course the suffering would be miti- 

 gated. The pups might get some little nourishment here and these, 

 and death might not be instantaneous and sure, but yet, if you were to 

 take away part of the supply of food, there must be suffering, and, if 

 the diminution is great, there must be death. If we show that some of 

 these people take 500, 1,000 and 2,000 mothers full of milk in one of 

 their expeditions, it is plain that that milk was intended for the pupsj 

 the pups do not get it, and therefore the pups die. 



The President. — You are not aware that seal milk has ever been col- 

 lected by man's hand and used perhaps as a beverage and food by the 

 natives'? 



Mr. CouDERT. — I do not think that it is. There is no evidence that I 

 have seen in the book that it ever has been. Probably for some reason 

 or other it is not palatable; but one would suppose that as in the case 

 of goats, or any other animal (other than cows), the effort would have 

 been made and that some one would claim that the milk of the seal 

 possessed great curative i^roperties. 



The President. — If it were a domestic animal it would be a natural 

 idea; but your assertion is that the mother seal has ouly milk for one 

 offspring. 



Mr. CouDERT. — That is all. I want to read also from the evidence 

 of another witness, who has been frequently quoted, on page 129, who 

 has lived on the islands since 1809. Of course if he does not know all 

 about seal life he must be a very stupid man, and if he makes a mis- 

 statement the probability is he does it intentionally. He says : 



Until 1891 we were allowed to kill several thousand pup seals for food in Novem- 

 ber about the time they were ready to leave the Island. We generally killed ten or 

 twelve for every person on the Island, and when we killed them tliey were always 

 found to be full of milk. 



You will observe that this was in ISTovember, when the .seals are on 

 the eve of their departure, and this would carry out what was stated 

 in the Case, and prove that it is accurate and true, namely, that duriug 

 this whole period the pups subsist entirely on milk. 



The President. — At any rate this seems to contradict the statement 

 that female seals are never killed on the islands. 



Mr. Coudert. — They are not killed on the Islands. 



The President. — He says that they are found full of milk. 



Mr. Coudert. — No. The jmj^s are found full of milk on opening 

 their stomachs. 



The President. — Perhaps so; I beg your pardon. 



Mr. Coudert. — There is no other food found in them. When, the 

 others are killed, fish and various other products of the sea are found 

 in their stomachs; but until the pups leave the island there is no evi- 

 dence that any nutritious substance is found in them except milk. And 

 I may say in this connection to the learned President, that during a long 

 time, and when pelagic sealing had not made the most rigid economy 

 a necessity, the inhabitants of the island were allowed to take, for their 

 own purposes of food, a certain number of pups in November; and we 

 can well imagine that they would have preferred to eat the pups rather 

 than the older animals — but even then only the male pups were killed, 



