SEALS. 77 



There can be no doubt that at all times hereafter seals will be 

 attainable in great quantities as is now the case in Newfound- 

 land by stationary fishers, who know the courses they take in 

 their migrations, and can intercept them in their progress by nets 

 and other contrivances. Thus, if we encourage our new settlers to 

 disturb as speedily as possible every seal-station they can discover, 

 we shall receive from them an immense supply of skins and oil 

 in the first instance; shall prevent the interference of foreign 

 nations in future in the sealing fishery; and secure to ourselves 

 a permanent fishery hereafter, because it will be carried out by 

 means which none but stationary fishermen can provide." 



To show how far out Banks was in his estimate of the per- 

 manency of the seal fishery, I may quote a sentence from a despatch 

 sent by Surgeon Luttrell to Under-Secretary Sullivan, dated the 

 8th October, 1807 : " A few of the ships that have arrived have 

 had a Home freight of whale-oil and seal-skins, but the latter trade 

 is greatly on the decline, as the seals are all nearly destroyed on 

 the southern islands in this coast, or, from the constant molestation 

 they have suffered, have abandoned the islands." In the course 

 of a parliamentary inquiry held in England in 1819 a Mr. 

 McDonald, who had been sealing on the New Zealand coast, gave 

 some evidence on this subject, from which I summarize the follow- 

 ing : The seals were taken at two different seasons, the best being 

 in April, when the pups are six months old, and the other about 

 Christmas, when the females come to the males. The pup seals 

 yield about 2 gallons of oil, and the " wigs," or old males, from 

 5 to 6 gallons. The skins brought from 5s. to 8s. each. On the 

 first voyage he was out they brought over some 11,500 skins. Asked 

 if the skins were becoming scarce on the coast of New Zealand, 

 he stated that they were not, but they required to be well sought 

 after. 



From 1803 to 1805 several small vessels visited the south and 

 south-west coasts of New 'Zealand and carried off many thousands 

 of seal-skins ; but even by that date the seals must have been reduced 

 in numbers, and the sealers had turned their attention to the 

 Southern Islands. Thus in 1806 the American ship "Favourite" 

 reached Sydney with 60,000 seal-skins, said to have been obtained 

 on the "east coast of New Zealand." As a matter of fact, they 

 were taken on Antipodes Island. 



