SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRITLSH SEAS. 7 



and, notwithstanding the enormous destruction of these creatures, which takes 

 place every season on the Newfoundland sealing grounds, many thousands of 

 which, from the wasteful methods employed in their capture, are never 

 accounted for, Mr. Carroll is still of opinion that up to the year 1873, their 

 numbers were actually on the increase : this can hardly continue much longer 

 to be the case. 



I will only mention one of the methods employed by the Newfoundland 

 sealers, which must eventually be attended with the most disastrous effects. 

 This mode is technically called "panning." Mr. Carroll, writing in 1871 

 says, " No greater injury can possibly be done to the seal-fishery than that of 

 bulking Seals on pans of ice by crews of ice-hunters. Thousands of Seals 

 are killed and bulked, and never seen afterwards. When the men come up 

 with a large number of old and young Seals, that cannot get into the water, 

 owing to the ice being in one solid jam, they drive them together, selecting a 

 pan surrounded with rafted ice, on which thousands of Seals are placed one 

 over the other, perhaps fifteen feet deep. A certain number of men is picked 

 out by the ship-master to pelt and put on board the bulked Seals, whilst 

 other men are sent to kill more. It often happens that the men are obliged 

 to go from one to ten miles, before they come up with the Seals again, and 

 very often the men pile from five hundred to two thousand in each bulk, 

 which bulks are from one to two miles apart ; care is also taken that flags are 

 stuck up as a guide to direct the men where to find such bulked Seals. So 

 uncertain is the weather, and precarious the shifting about of the ice, as well 

 as heavy falls of snow and drift, that very often such bulked Seals are never 

 seen again by the men that killed and bulked them, as the vessels and steam- 

 ships are frequently driven by gales of wind far out of sight or reach of them, 

 and frequently wheeled or driven into another spot, when the men again 

 commence killing and bulking as before. In many instances it has happened 

 that the crews of vessels, as well as the crews of steamships, have killed and 



