118 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. vm. 



moved along through the prickly pears, that covered the 

 ground, when compelled by his cruel pursuers ; and, at 

 last, with an imploring look and writhing in pain, it held 

 out its fin-like arms, which were pierced with thorns, in 

 such a manner as to touch the sympathy of even the 

 barbarous sealers, who put the sufferer out of its misery 

 by a stroke of a heavy club." It is not pleasant to con- 

 template. A hundred thousand fur seals per annum, in 

 the Alaska fishery alone driven onward for hours over 

 ground which it must be torture for them to traverse, and 

 then allowed to " cool down " before the butchery com- 

 mences. Think of it, ye tender, soft-skinned English 

 ladies, as ye sit at ease in your warm fur mantles. 



And the soft-eyed earless seal, whose skin is so much 

 less valuable, he does not fare much better. Through the 

 ice of the Gulf of Bothnia they fish for the pretty 

 creatures. " For this purpose they employ an iron imple- 

 ment of three barbed hooks, on one of which a young 

 seal is impaled alive. The mother hearing its cries 

 approaches it quickly, and immediately embraces it, in 

 the hope to free it, but in so doing presses the other 

 barbed hooks into herself, and both mother and young 

 are drawn out of the water together." Brave and bonny 

 fishing that, is it not ? Professor Jukes, in a sealing 

 vessel in Newfoundland waters, says " When piled in a 

 heap together the young seals looked like so many lambs ; 

 and when occasionally from out of the bloody and dirty 

 mass of carcases, one poor wretch, still alive, would lift 

 up its face and begin to flounder about, I could stand it 

 no longer, and arming myself with a hand-spike, I pro- 

 ceeded to knock on the head and put out of their misery 

 all in whom I saw signs of life." The professor also 

 states that the young seals are "sometimes barbarously 

 skinned alive," and they have been seen to swim away in 



