ORAL ARGUMENT OF FREDERICK R. COUDERT, ESQ. 387 



Here is the practical, realistic way in which our frieuds, the British 

 Commissioners, state it. There is no idealism about it. Section 633. 



By the pelagic sealers and by the Indian hunters along the coast, fur-seals of both 

 sexes are killed, and, indeed, it would be unreasonable, under the circumstances, to 

 expect that a distinction should be made in this respect, any more than that the 

 angler should discriminate between the sexes of the tish he may hook. 



It is absolutely true. If you ijerniit pelagic sealing, do not ask the 

 im])ossible. Tell the sealer. "Go on, call it iishing; treat it as fishing", 

 and have no more sentiment or regard upon the subject than when you 

 drop your baited hook into the depths of the Ocean and pull up a fish." 

 The effect of this, fortunately or unfortunately, we know something 

 about. Climate does not regulate this matter, but the laws of nature; 

 and nature herself has prohibited, under x^enalty of extinction of the 

 thing itself, the killing of females. Here is "the experience of the 

 world as taught us in the Southern Seas. That map is an object-lesson, 

 to which I will call the attention of the Court in one moment; but first, 

 let me read what the British Commissioners, at section 860, say upon 

 the subject: 



It is a matter of some difficulty to estimate the total number of seals taken in the 

 South Seas during the period of the excessive energy of the great sealing industry. 

 But there are actual records which, added together, bring the acknowledged total 

 to more than 16,000,000. 



These seals were taken from about thirty different island groups or coast districts 

 on the mainland, and they were all taken by the one method of indiscriminate 

 slaughter on shore. 



It is jirobable that this wholesale slaughter did not extend evermore than seventy 

 years, but it is certain that at the end of the period the fur seals were so terribly 

 reduced in numbers that even the sixty years of subsequent rest and total cessation 

 of killing have not sufbced to bring about any eflectual restoration of the numbers 

 of years gone bj'. 



While the condemnation of these British Commissioners attaches to 

 this kind of killing, why should it not attach equally to indiscriminate 

 slaughter on the high seas? What is the difference"? It is more con- 

 venient; and that explains the raiding upon our Islands. It is less 

 dangerous, because the tempests do not touch and possibly imi)eril 

 their lives. But what is the difference between killing on the high sea 

 indiscriminately and killing upon the land indiscriminately? The 

 havoc that operated upon the Southern Seas in a few years made a 

 wreck of this business; shall it not make a wreck in the future? 



I want to read briefly from the Case of the United States, page 218. 



The indiscriminate slaughter of seals in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and 

 Behring Sea can not fail to produce a result similar to that observed in the southern 

 hemisphere, where the fur-seals have, except at a few localities, become from a 

 commercial point of view, practically extinct. A full account of the distribution 

 and the destruction of the antarctic seal herds is given by Dr. Allen in his article 

 found in the Appendix ? 



Now, the most important of the localities are shewn on this map; 

 and my friend, Mr. Lansing, will be good enough to point them out. 

 The most important are as follows. One is Masafuero, Juan Fernan- 

 dez, the coast of Chile, Cape Horn, the Falkland Islands; — those were 

 once the homes of the seals where they congregated in large numbers. — 

 the South Georgia Islands, Sandwich Land, South Shetland Islands, 

 Tristan d'Acunha, and Georgia Island. Then the West Coast of Africa, 

 the Island of Prince Island, Crozet Island, Saint Paul and Amsterdam 

 Islands, Kerguelen Island, the South Coast of Australia, Tasmania, 

 and the Islands south of New Zealand. 



The seals in all those localities, says our case, have been destroyed 

 by the indiscriminate killing of old and young males and females. If 



