COUNTEK-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 227 



selves most violently, crowd in confused sweltering heaps one upon 

 the other, so that many are often "smothered" to death; and in this 

 manner of most extraordinary effort, to be urged along over stretches 

 of unbroken miles, they are obliged to use muscles and nerves that 

 Nature never intended them to use, and Avhich are not fitted for the 

 action. 



This prolonged, sudden, and unusual effort, unnatural and A'iolent 

 strain, must leave a lasting mark upon tlie physical condition of 

 every seal thus driven, and then suffered to escape from the clubbed 

 pods on the killing-grounds; they are alternately heated to the point 

 of suffocation, gasping, panting, allowed to cool down at intervals, 

 then abruptly started up on the road for a fresh renewal of this heat- 

 ing as they lunge, shamble, and creep along. When they arrise on 

 the killing-grounds, after four or five hours of this distressing effort 

 ou their part, they are then suddenly cooled off for the last time prior 

 to the final ordeal of clubbing; then when driven up into the last 

 surround or "pod," if the seals are spared from cause of being unfit 

 to take, too big or too little, bitten, &c., tlioy are permitted to go off 

 from the killing-ground back to the sea, outwardly unhurt, most of 

 them; but I am now satisfied that they sustain in a vast majority of 

 cases internal injuries of greater or less degree, that remain to Avork 

 physical disability or death thereafter to nearly every seal thus 

 265 released, and certain destruction of its virility and courage 

 necessary for a station on the rookery even if it can possibly 

 run the gauntlet of driving throughout every sealing season for five 

 or six consecutive years; driven over and over again as it is during 

 eacli one of these sealing seasons. 



Therefore, it now appears plain to me, that those young male fur- 

 seals which may happen to survive this terrible strain of seven years 

 of driving overland are rendered by this act of driving wholly worth- 

 less for breeding purposes — they never go to the breeding-grounds and 

 take up stations there, being utterly demoralized in spirit and in body. 



With this knowledge, then, the full effect of "driving" becomes 

 apparent, and that result of slowly but surely robbing the rookeries 

 of a full and sustained supply of fresh young male blood, demanded 

 by Nature imperatively, for their support up to the standard of full 

 expansion (such as I recor<!ed in 1872-74), — that result began, it now 

 seems clear, to set in from the beginning, twenty years ago, under the 

 present system. 



ME. C. J. GOFF, 1890. 



Referring to the same ye.ar, and in illustration particu- 

 larly of the cumulative losses inflicted by this process of 

 driving when the number of young males of "killable" age 

 has become nuich reduced — losses which must have been in 

 progress for many years, though they did not culminate in 

 intensity till the year 1890 — Treasury Agent Goff may be 

 quoted as follows : 



Now, in opening the season, it is customary to secure all the 2-year- British Case, 

 olds and upwards possible before the yearUngs begin to fill up the ^r|wndix,vol.iii, 

 Iiauling grounds and mix with the killable seals. By so doing it is jjf/2\iS9i) ' prf 

 much easier to do the work, and the yearlings are not tortured by i.''),i6. ' ' 

 being driven and rediiveu to the killing-grounds. Heretofore it was United States 

 seldom that nujro than 15 per cent, of all the seals driven the latter p^^J"' o®% ^^^^ 

 ])art of June and the first few days in July were too small to be Ex"%oc!'no!^49 

 killed, but this season the case was reversed, and in many instances jip. 4, 5. 

 80 to 85 per cent, wore turned away. The accompanying percentage 

 examples will show the disposition of this year's drive. The first kill- 

 ing of fur-seals by the lessees was on the 6th June, and the scarcity 

 of killable seals was apparent to all. 



The season closed on the 20th July, and the drives in July show 

 a decided increase in the percentages of small seals turned away, and 

 a decrease in thokiDables over the drives of June, demonstrating con- 

 clusively that there were but few killable seals arriving, and that 

 the larger j)art of those returning to the islands were the pups of last 

 year. The average daily killing for the season was 400, or a daily 

 average of 522 including only the days worked. 



• P • M * 



