Ladies who pride themselves on their "seal-skins," and who enjoy
the comfort of them, should read Mr. Frank Buckland'a letter to last Wednesdays Times, and at least use their influence with Members of Parliament to get an inter- national arrangement agreed upon between . the nations which send out sealers, restricting the seal-hunting season to a period later than the first week in April. As it is, the seal hunters rendezvous near Jan Meyen (72 or 73° north latitude), the nearest place for seals, about the third week in March, when the baby seals are just born, and the sickening scenes ensue which Captain Gray has thus described to Mr. Buokland. The harpooner chooses a place where a number of young seals are lying, and harpoons the mothers directly they come to see after them ; this makes the mothers shy, and induces them to keep at a distance, and the baby seals are aban- doned ;—" It is horrible to see the young ones trying to suck the carcasses of their mothers, their eyes starting out of their sockets, looking the very picture pf famine. They crawl over and over them until quite red with blood, poking- them with their noses, no doubt wondering why they are not getting their usual food, uttering painful cries the while. The noise they make is something dreadful. If one could imagine himself surrounded by four or five hundred thousand human babies all crying at the pitch of their voices, he would have some idea of it. Their cry is very like an infant's. These motherless seals collect into lots of five or six, and crawl about the ice, their heads fast becoming the biggest part of their bodies, searching to find the nourishment they stand so much in want of." Such enmity is gruesome, and worse than unnecessary, destruc- tive of the very harvest the harpooners seek. Three weeks later the babies would be independent of their mothers, and their skins, if they were to be killed, worth more than the shilling which those of the poor starved baby beats now fetch. The horrible indifference of man to the sufferings of the lower animals is one of the vilest of his vices.
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