106 TESTIMONY 



around them on which some strips of sacking or old garments arehnng, 

 several thousand are herded and kept for hours, until the time, perhaps 

 on the following day, for their slaughter. They grow very tame and 

 tractable by repeated driving, and even the old bulls lose their fierce- 

 ness and seldom turn upon their herders, particularly when brought 

 in from the rookeries near the villages, where they become most familiar 

 with man. 

 They seem never to be afflicted with any disease. The pups are 

 always healthy, fat, and happy; the males too young 

 for slaughter play about on the rookeries during the 

 killing season and between the intervals of driving to the killing 

 ground, gallopmg up and down the slopes or wrestling in good-natured 

 contest, as the young of other animals do when undisturbed, showing 

 no signs of fear or timidity. The still younger seals, during their first 

 few weeks, have so little fear of man that they may be picked up at 

 any time more readily than young lambs; and when a little older, after 

 they have learned to swim, they come by thousands upon the beaches 

 close to the village and may be driven up en masse and taken to a 

 corral and impounded, or simply herded by a watchman and kept to- 

 gether for an indefinite length of time. When so herded 

 ing or^markmg.^'^^'^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ readily taken up one by one and marked 

 by some mutilation, such as the cutting oft' an ear, as 

 has been practiced on one or two occasions, I am told, for the purpose 

 of identifying them afterwards, or by branding them. From my expe- 

 rience, with both seals and cattle, I should as soon undertake to brand 

 a lot of young seals as so many calves ; and I believe by attempting i;; 

 at the proper season, after the old seals have mostly left the island, 

 and the young are " podding" by themselves, there would be no diffi- 

 culty in "rounding up" simultaneously nearly all the young born in a 

 single season and marking them for complete future identification. 

 Their habits of breeding are so nearly hke those of domestic animals 

 that one having them in control needs only to follow 

 Breeding. -j^-g exjDerience as a shepherd or "cattleman" to cause 



them to become most prolific. He must keep all the females and kill 

 off, as far as possible, all the surplus males above the number abso- 

 lutely required for breeding purposes. I think these requirements 

 were very exactly fulfilled by the late lessees of the seal fisheries during 

 the time of my employment by them ; and they are certainly able to 

 point to the fact, unless I am grossly misinformed, that from 1870, 

 when they first took hold of the business, up to the 

 he?d from mo toT884^ ^^^ of my scTvice for them in 1884, the system pursued 

 by them was as perfect as it could be, and resulted in a 

 steady increase of the seals. They failed only in omitting to take proper 

 measures by branding or mutilation, as I have pointed out, to identify 

 their proj)erty while pasturing in tlie ocean. The owner 

 identiflcation^_of of a scal skiu with an ineffaceable brand on it would, 

 or oaer mIrkSg. ^^ evcu iu a foreign country, I imagine, have some sort of 

 property right which international law would recog- 

 nize; and of his ability to mark nearly every skin with such a brand 

 upon the live young animal I have not the slightest doubt. 



Herbert Y. Fletcher. 



Subscribed and sworn to this 18th day of June, A. D. 1892, at Ean- 

 dolph, Vt , before me. 



[L. S.J Wm. H. Du Bois, 



Notary Fublie. 



