SEALS AND SEALERS. 255 
Dundee, three Greenock, six Liverpool, and six Newfoundland ; 
the two largest, the ‘ Esquimaux’ (466 tons) and the ‘ Neptune’ 
(465 tons) belonging to Dundee and Liverpool respectively, and, 
as no vessel arrived in port earlier than the 8th of April, no 
second voyage was possible. The total number of Seals taken by 
these nineteen vessels, including the great catch of 42,242 by the 
‘ Neptune,’ was 210,810, a number far short of 500,000. 
There are no “floes” on the Newfoundland coast, the ice 
being broken up by the swell into “ pack ice” long before it 
reaches the coast, and it is on portions of this ice known as 
“pans” that the young Seals are produced, the old Seal visiting 
the water not through a hole bitten or scratched through the ice 
(p. 516),—an impossibility,—but by open spaces between the 
different pieces forming the pack. The statement that the Harp 
Seals yield more oil than the “ Hoods” is not borne out by 
actual results. These are small matters apparently ; but if Lady 
Blake has been misinformed in small matters, we may assume 
that some of her other information is equally inaccurate. 
It is unhappily a fact, as Lady Blake states, that ‘ trading 
interests” in the present day, whether in “‘ smashed birds”’ for 
ladies’ hats or in Seal skins, override all other considerations, 
and in the struggle for existence (only those engaged in it know 
how severe it is) it must be so; the Seal-fisheries are an 
established fact, and the Seal-hunter—however much we may 
regret his mode of earning his bread—will always remain a Seal- 
hunter so long as there are Seals to hunt, and his occupation can 
no more be suppressed than that of the slaughterer of oxen, 
sheep, and swine. The whole animal world is a complex system 
of cruelties, in which one form preys upon another as its only 
means of existence, and man, as the strongest, subjects all 
creation to his necessities or pleasures. Hducation may in time 
ameliorate the sufferings of the lower animals at our hands, and 
has doubtless done much in that direction already. The whole 
question resolves itself to this—Are the Seals to be killed at all ? 
If so, as a matter of absolute necessity, their fate must be a 
cruel one, and let us by all legitimate means try to alleviate it as 
much as possible; but I fear this is not to be accomplished by 
any system of “ putting down,” or applying terms of opprobrium 
to those who are striving to provide for their families as honestly 
as they can. 
