354 SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



References to the report showing that yearlings and 2-year olds come 

 to the islands might be multiplied almost indefinitely. (See pp. 98, 

 139, 140, 143, 147, 253, 255, 256, 277, 28!), 291.) 



(11) Mr. Elliott scorns the notion upon which the trainers of the 

 British case have sought to base the moral title of Canada to a special 

 benefit from the herd, namely, that the seals consume food which would 

 otherwise support fisheries valuable to Canada, for he shows that the 

 true enemy of these fisheries is the dogfish, of which the seal is, in its 

 turn, the greatest destroyer. 



Page 307: Suppose, for argument, that we could and did kill all the seals, we 

 would at once give the deadly dogfish (Squaino ancarthias), which fairly swarms in 

 these waters, an immense impetus to its present extensive work of destruction of 

 untold millions of young food fishes, such as herring, cod, and salmon. 



A dogfish can and does destroy every day of its existence hundreds and thousands 

 of young cod, salmon, and other food fishes destroys at least double and quadru- 

 ple as much as a seal. What is the most potent factor to the destruction of the dog- 

 fish f Why the seal himself, and unless man can and will destroy the dogfish first, 

 he will be doing positive injury to the very cause he pretends to champion if he is- 

 permitted to disturb this equilibrium of nature and destroy the seal. 



VI. 



If Mr. Elliott's views, as an observer of facts, as a discoverer of causes r 

 as a reason er, or as an authority in any particular upon seal life upon 

 the Pribilof Islands, are of any value whatever, it should be to show 

 that in the years from 1884 to 1890 the male seals had, in consequence 

 of overdriving, become so few in number and so destitute of virile power 

 that they were not competent to the task of impregnating even the 

 diminished number of female seals which the herd then contained. 



Do those who represent the Government of Great Britain really wish 

 to persuade the Tribunal that this is true? Such would seem to be the 

 only conceivable purpose for which such a struggle was made to intro- 

 duce this report into the evidence. Unless it tends to prove this, it has 

 no tendency except to overthrow every position taken on the part of 

 Great Britain. 



But yet the same learned counsel have produced more than one 

 hundred witnesses who swear that in the years 1891 and 1892 the seal& 

 were found upon the seas in unprecedented numbers, and some twenty- 

 five of them note specifically having taken young, small, or 2 year-old 

 seals, some of the catches consisting exclusively of this class, which 

 must have owed their existence to the impotent bull observed by Mr. 

 Elliott. 



What are we to believe that Elliott's statements are worthless, or 

 that these witnesses are testifying to what is false, or that these few 

 supposed impotent bulls were endowed with procreative powers wholly 

 unprecedented even in the case of the Alaskan bull seal? Let these 

 contradictious be reconciled as best they may. In the view of the Gov- 

 ernment of the United States, both these conflicting statements are alike 

 untrustworthy and should be disregarded. 



(1) The names of the one hundred witnesses and upward are given 

 in the British counter case (Appendix, Vol. II, pp. 29-33). 



(2) The names of the twenty-five witnesses above mentioned, who 

 caught young, small, or 2-year olds in 1892, are as follows (see British 

 counter case, Appendix, Vol. II, pp. 14-22) : 



Capt. Abel Douglas, George Eoberts, William G. Goudie, James 

 Shields, George F. French, Andrew Mathison, Capt. Ernest Lorenz, 

 Capt. Charles Campbell, Capt. James W. Todd, Henry Paxton, George 



