86 



NATURE 



\yune 4, 1874 



brood was destroyed, and had these seals been left alone for 

 ci^'ht or ten days, 1 am quite within the mark when I say 

 that, instead of only taking 300 tons of oil out of 

 them, 1,500 could as easily have been got, and that with- 

 out touching an old one." In one day by the men of the five 

 ships upwards of 4,000 old seals were taken, "the young ones 

 in thousands yelling for their mothers, following the skins as the 

 men dragged them to the ships, and sucking the crangs, i.e. skins, 

 in desperation." The maternal love for its offspring was made 

 use of to save the men trouble, as a seal killed when giving suck 

 was more easily secured, and often seals desperately wounded 

 were seen administering nourishment to their young ones. The 

 plight of the young ones which had lost their mothers was pitiful 

 in the extreme ; they were seen huddling together for heat, "and 

 trying to suck one another," till they at length succumbed. 

 Capt. Gray exclaims, " surely there is influence enough left in 

 Great Britain to prevent a continuation of such barbarity. I 

 overheard some of my men saying to one another, ' It is a shame 

 this sort of work ; ' and so it is. "it is a shame that any civilised 

 Government should allow its subjects to perpetrate such cruelty 

 when it could so easily be prevented. The remedy is simply, let 

 the ships be kept from sailing before March 25 ; ships now sail 

 from Feb. 25 to March i. this would give a fortnight to make 

 the passage, and find the seals in ; by that time the young would 

 be beginning to be worth taking, and a fearful waste of life put a 

 stop to that now annually occurs." The accounts of the cruelties 

 practiced in sealing are sickening in the extreme, the only thing 

 considered being how to deprive as great a number of their skin 

 and blubber in as short a time as possible. Mr. Brown (Free. 

 Zool. Soc, 186S) remarks : " Seals are very tenacious of life, and 

 difficult to kill, unless by a bullet through the brain or heart. 

 They are so quickly7?c«j,-(/(the operation ( f removing the blubber 

 and skin) that after havingbeen deprived of their skin they havebeen 

 seen to strike out in the water ; so that the sympathies of the rough 

 hunters have been so excited that they will pierce the heart 

 several times with their knives before throwing away the carcass." 

 These movements Mr. Brown attributes to reflex action, but 

 considering the haste of the operation, and the seal's known 

 tenacity of life, it is quite as likely that it was merely a stunned 

 and not a dead animal thus deprived of its skin and blubber. 

 It is terrible to dwell thus upon the horrors of this cruel trade, 

 which make even the hardened participators sicken and relent, 

 but it is necessary that it should be done, in order, if possible, 

 to reach the hearts of Englishmen, and enlist their sympathies. 

 If these beautiful and harmless creatures must be sacrificed fci- 

 our requirements, it is a duty incumbent upon us to_ see that 

 their destruction is carried out mercifully, and with the infliction 

 of as little suffering and waste of life as possible. 



In a commercial point of view the reasons for exercising some 

 supervision over the seal fishery are as strong as those dictated 

 by mere humanity. The revenue produced by this branch of 

 industry is considerable. Mr. Brown estimates the annual value 

 of the Greenland fishery alone at 116,000/. (Broc. Zool. Soc, 

 1868, p. 439), and ominously adds : " Supposing the sealing 

 prosecuted with the same vigour as at present, I have little hesi- 

 tation in stating my opinion that, before thirty years shall have 

 passed away, the ' seal fishery ' as a source of commercial 

 revenue will have come to a close, and the progeny of the 

 immense number of seals now swimming about in the Green- 

 land waters, will number comparatively lev/." We cannot plead 

 want of warning, for we have numeroas instances of marine 

 animals which have been exterminated by untimely slaughter 

 (See Prof. Newton's " Extermination of Marine Mammalia," 

 Natuke, vol. ix. p. 112). Steller's Mantee survived its dis- 

 covery only about twenty-seven years ; the Atlantic Right 

 Whale, which formerly gave employment to a great number of 

 hardy fishermen in the Bay of Biscay and English Channel, Is 

 probably exterminated ; the Northern Right Whales are gra- 

 dually driven farther and farther north, and the risk of 

 following them is becoming proportionately greater ; the same 

 mav lie said of the walrus. The northern lur-seal was rapidly 

 passing away, and but for the timely intervention of the Russian 

 and American Governments would probably have been lost ; and 

 from our antipodes comes an appeal repeating all the cruelties 

 and waste of life to which our northern feals are subjected, and 

 pleading for protection on behalf of the southern fur-seals (W. 

 A. Scott, " Mammalia, Recent and Extinct," Sydney, 1873). 



The question arises, how is this wanton destruction to be 

 stopped and the fishery to be placed on a sounder footing? In 

 order that it may be done effectually, the regulations must, 



without doubt, be " international ; " and no time should be lost 

 in carrying them into effect. The British Association has ren- 

 dered good service in obtaining an Act to protect sea-birds 

 during their breeding-time, and if, assisted by men of practical 

 experience such as Capt. Gray, they were to urge upon the 

 Government some course of action, they would be supported by 

 all the scientific bodies and leading naturalists in the kingdom. 

 Norwich, May 12. Thos. Southwell 



THE COMING TRANSIT OF VENUS* 

 VII. 



IN our last article the preparations of Britain, Germany 

 and Russia were enumerated ; those of the French, 

 Americans, Dutch, and Italians must now be spoken of. 



V. The French will occupy the following stations : — 

 Yokohama, Pekin, New Amsterdam or St. Paul's, and 

 Campbell Island ; all equipped as first-class stations, 

 besides Tientsin, Sagou, Numea, and probably Nukahiva 

 in the Marquesas, as secondary stations. Yokohama and 

 St. Paul's will make an excellent combination for the 

 method of durations ; at Campbell) Island also the dura- 

 tions will be considerably lessened. But the longitude of 

 these places will be determined, so that if only one contact 

 be observed, De I'lsle's method will be applied. MM. 

 Wolf and Andre have made a series of experiments on the 

 formation of the "black drop;" numerous trials have 

 also been made with a view of employing the photographic 

 method as successfully as possible, and it is possible that 

 spectroscopic observations of external contact will be made. 

 The preparations are by no means so far advanced as 

 might have been wished. This is partly due to the dis- 

 turbed state in which the country has been since the late 

 war. 



We are glad to be able to state that the French will 

 employ the daguerreotype process of photography. This 

 method has many advantages, and it is much to be re- 

 gretted that no experiments have been made by other 

 nations to test its applicability. Photographs taken by 

 this process are well known to be much more delicate and 

 give clearer details than any others, while photographic 

 irradiation is reduced to a minimum. It is even possible to 

 correct for curvature of field by employing prepared plates 

 whose surfaces are portions of spheres, a thing which 

 would be impossible by any other process. There can 

 be no shrinking of the film. The only objection is, that we 

 cannot print copies from the plates conveniently. But it 

 is not likely that wc should trust to measurements of a 

 printed copy even from a glass negative. The French are 

 relying mainly upon the photographic method, and have 

 chosen their stations for determining thus directly the 

 least distance between the centre of the sun and Venus. 

 With the apparatus proposed by MM. Wolf and Martin, 

 the size of the sun's image will be 60 millimetres ; they 

 hope to determine the instants of internal contact with 

 a probable error of one second of time. The commission 

 into whose hands the businesshas beenentrustedhasdrawn 

 up a detailed report containing contributions not only from 

 the astronomers of France, but also from the most 

 celebrated physicists and experimentalists : 300,000 fr. 

 has been voted for the enterprise. M. Tisserand of the 

 Toulouse Obsen-atory will aid in the actual observations ; 

 and M. Jannsen will proceed to Yokohama. 



M.Dumas takes the lead in the preparations. In a 

 letter dated May 12, he says tha the expeditions are on 

 the point of starting, and that the IMarquesas probably, 

 ;,nd Numea certainly, will be occupied for De I'lsle's 

 method. 



\'l. — The Americans have a grant of 150,000 dols. They 

 have paid great attention to the application of photo- 

 graphy with the assistance of Mr. Rutherford, whose 

 success in photographing the moon is so well known, 



* Continued from p. 69. 



