APPENDIX TO COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 649 



Declaration of David Laing. 



Dominion of Canada, 



Province of British Golumhia., City of Victoria, 



I, David Laing, of the city of Victoria, in tlie Province of Britisli 

 Columbia, do solemnly declare as follows: 



1. I was first engaged in the sealing business in 1867. I was out that 

 year in the "Favourite;" we had an Indian crew. I was out in 1868, 

 1869, and 1870, and in 1879 was sealing on the " Onward." I was on 

 the "Favourite" again in 1888; in 1889, the "0. H. Tupper; " in 1890 

 on the " Venture;" and in the " W. P. Say ward" the last two years. 

 During the past two years I have been out as mate and hunter with 

 the stern-boat, and the three previous years I was out as mate. 



2. I got twenty-six seals last year, and lost none of them by sinking, 

 and this year I got forty-two without losing a single skin by sinking. 

 A seal that is at all badly wounded we are almost sure to get; one is 

 seldom lost when badly wounded. 



3. Last year, when 2 miles oif , we got eighteen seals in Sep- 

 tember; they would spring up, and we did not wait to hunt them. 



4. I saw more seals this year than ever before, and most of them were 



travelling. 

 80 5. I have seen seals travelling in schools both north and south 



of Cape Flattery; they are more difficult to get them, as they 

 are very wild. I have noticed that seals are wilder than they were. 



6. Sometimes a band of bulls might be seen together, but as a rule 

 the males and females travel together, and with them are mixed the 

 yearlings. 



7. I prefer shooting at a breaching seal to any other, and for a 

 "breacher" use 5 drams of powder and 28 buck-shot. I use 21 shot 

 for a sleeping seal. 



8. There is no danger of seals being exterminated; the large catches 

 this year prove that no harm has yet been done, and if the seals are 

 protected on the islands they will be all right. 



9. I have noticed that male seals have teats, and on looking at a seal 

 for sex I wonld not trust to them unless the seal were an old bull. I 

 have handled many thousand skins, and could not tell the sex of the 

 seal from which they were taken by the skins. 



10. I have hunted much with Indians in early days; they had a 

 superstition about having guns in their canoes, but now they use both 

 gun and spear. If they could only have the gun or spear, and not 

 both, the young men would choose the former and the old men the 

 latter. 



11. I think that on the coast there are more females than males, but 

 in Behring Sea (American side) there are more males than females. It 

 was the same on the Russian side; the seals there are much larger — 

 at least those I have seen were — than those on the American side. 



12. I have seen barren cows and killed them with the other seals ; 

 they were principally old seals. 



And I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the 

 same to be true, and by virtue of " The Act respecting Extra- Judicial 

 Oaths." 



(Signed) David Laing. 



