ALLEGED EVILS OF DRIVING, 127 
THE ANIMAL DRIVEN. 
If we suppose that any rejected seal is driven fifteen times in five years we 
have made a liberal estimate. This means an average of 15 miles of land travel for 
each animal, for the drives on the islands do not average more than a mile in length. 
The seals, as we have already seen in the description of the drive, are allowed to take 
their own time and rest frequently on the journey. The animal, moreover, is not ill 
adapted to land travel. It is not a fish, but a bear which has become adapted to life 
in the water. It can and does voluntarily climb cliffs which a man would find 
difficulty in scaling. It makes considerable journeys of its own accord. When on 
its hauling grounds, it is constantly in motion, pitted against its fellows in contests 
‘requiring violent exertion. On its migrations it is capable of swimming thousands 
upon thousands of miles and buffeting the storms of an unusually tempestuous sea. 
Such is the animal which is supposed to be fatally, or at.least permanently, injured 
by. an average of 3 miles of land travel annually in five years. The conclusion is 
preposterous. 
THE THEORY INTANGIBLE. 
When we come to scrutinize Mr. Elliott’s theory, we can not find a tangible bit of 
evidence to support it. There was no dearth of bulls in 1890. He found 12,000 bulls 
on the rookeries, with more to. spare idle on the sand beaches. This was a number 
entirely adequate to the needs of the herd. The presence of idle bulls showed there 
were more than enough. It is true he asserts that the bulls were impotent. Why 
they should seek the rookeries in this condition is not explained. Furthermore, Mr. 
Elliott has not, in support of this charge of impotency, recorded the dissection of a 
single animal, the only way by which the fact of impotency could be ascertained. 
Mr. Elliott declares that no fresh male life existed in reserve to replenish this 
wornout stock. In the face of this statement he records, however, in his data for the 
killings he witnessed, the rejection of more than 1,100 young half bulls, which are 
just the class he says does not exist. He lays great stress upon the strain and 
exertion which the few miles of land travel produces in the driven seal, and asserts 
that practically none of them survive it. Of the thousands rejected under his eyes 
ou the killing grounds in 1890, he records but a single instance of death resulting 
from this cause, and inasmuch as no autopsy examination is recorded, we have only 
his opinion in the matter and must dissent from it. 
When we attempt to fit this theory of overdriving to the conditions during the 
period prior to 1890, we meet with no great success. That the driving in these years 
did not kill the 2 and 1 year old animals driven is shown by the fact that these 
seals appeared each year as 3-year-olds to be driven. From the younger males so 
released each year and from these alone could the killable seals of subsequent years 
come. That the bulls serving the rookeries in these years were not impotent is shown 
by the number of young males which the hauling grounds were able to supply. The 
thousands of yearlings which he has recorded as turned back from the killing grounds 
in 1890 show clearly enough that the bulls were not impotent in 1888. Subsequent 
events show as clearly that the bulls he saw in 1890 were not impotent. 
ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION. 
This contention as to the effects of overdriving, pushed to its logical conclusion, 
means that animals are killed by it which persist in appearing afterwards distinctly 
