Fur -bearing Animals of the Pacific Slope. 193 



of firearms and the peculiarities of seal shooting to require further 

 proof. 



The hunters, who leave the vessel in small boats, each being 

 manned by two or more rowers and one "killer," are, even in the 

 smoothest sea, awkward craft for close shooting ; for, unlike the 

 Indians, who in their canoes manage to creep up to the sleeping 

 seal to within a few yards and then discharge their barbed spear, 

 from which no escape is possible when once " in," the white hunters 

 do most of their shooting at double or treble the distance. The 

 seal, if not hit in the head or neck, is not killed outright, but dives 

 and gets away, body wounds inflicted by the buckshot, of course, 

 ending often, after much suffering, in slow death. 



Most of the seals obtained in spring by pelagic sealing are 

 females heavy with young, while those caught after the breeding 

 season is over, or while it is still going on, are also with young; 

 and as many of the seals shot in July and August are females who 

 have temporarily left their rookeries in search of food, the death of 

 a suckling female at that season means practically the death of 

 three seals, i.e., the mother, the unborn young, and the pup, which, 

 as ample evidence has shown, dies of starvation at the rookery if 

 left to itself before it is three months old. 



One plea advanced by those blindly favouring the British case, 

 which otherwise is such a pre-eminently sound and just one, is 

 particularly unfortunate. When condemning the land killing as 

 conducted on the rookeries in the manner already described as 

 " rank butchery," as a " revolting destruction of animal life," " as 

 cruel as it is unsportsmanlike," "slaughter of animals without 

 giving them a chance for their lives," &c., one can only shake one's 

 head in indignation at such unreasonable special pleading. Even 

 some of those voicing their authoritative opinions in the British 

 Blue Book pander, one regrets to see, to this inhuman pleading. 

 Par. 610 says : " The accusation of butchery laid against those who 

 take the seals on shore cannot be brought against this pelagic 

 method of killing the seal, which is really hunting (save the mark !) 

 as distinguished from slaughter, and in which the animal has what 



O 



