SEALSKIN JACKETS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2760, 22 March 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

SEALSKIN JACKETS.

Cano\ Bell writes from Cheltenham :— " My attention has been called to a paragraph on the above subject, quoted from the Warehousemen and Drapers' Trade Journal. The writer of the paragraph referred to says that ' a statement made in a recent sermon of mine on the cruelty which attends the destruction of seals for the sake of their skins is not correct.' I should rejoice if it were so, but I did not draw upon my own imagination when I spoke of the horrors which attend what is called the ' seal fishery.' An article appeare.l in the April number of the Nineteenth Oantury, from the pen of Lady Blalte, who seems well acquainted with the subject, and which is called ' On Seals and Savages.' She deals with the seal fishery in Newfoundland, and she informs us that it is not in Alaska alone, or by Alaskau natives only, that seals are hunted and killed for their skins. Nor is the wholesale slaughter confined to a drove of bachelor seals. " When breeding time approaches the female seals congregate in countless numbers in the Northern seas, and herd together in great flocks on what is known as the "whelping ice." Fortunate is the mother seal whose offspring survives till old enough to take the water. It is while lying helpless ou the ice that the greater number of seals fall a prey to the sealers. It is now that the work of slaughter begins, and, horrible to say, the men in their careless haste often neglect to kill the unhappy cubs, and actually skin them alive! Such a fact would be almost too shocking for credence were it not attested on undoubted evidence; and Lady blake quotes Tocque, a native of Newfouudland, and also Professor Jukes, who was present on a sealing cruise, in proof of thejiorrible cruelty inflicted on its victims. The more skins secured (for these seals are not killed for their blubber) the greater the benefit ; so often the skins are taken without a moment being wasted in ending the life of the unhappy creature, which haS, perhaps, been rendered incapable of motion, that would impede the brutal work, by a blow on the nose or head. When frightened or hurt, the seals sob and cry like children in pain, and large tears roll down their dark and pleading eyes. Professor Jukes says that the cries of a young seal were precisely like those of a child in the extremity of fright, agony and distress—something between shrieks and convulsive sobbing —and yet the writer in the Warehousemen and Drapers' Trade Journal assures us that there is no half human wailing of calves which are not present, for mothers who are killed, and, consequently, there is noue of the slow agony of starvation. Who shall Judge between him and Professor Jukes? We are told, too, that the killing is not done by sailors at all, but by Alaskan natives. This may be true as regards Alaska, but, steamers sail from Dundee every season, and reach New Found laud about the end of February. One ship saling from that port in ISBB brought in forty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-four pelts. ' I may have yet to learu something about sealskin jackets,' as the writer in the Warehousemen's Trade Journal assures mo, but 1 have already learnt enough to know that the cost of a sealskin jacket as in many cases the exquisite agony of the mother seal and her cub. I would recommend all who doubt this to read Lady Blake's article in the Nineteenth Century, the accuracy of which, I am not aware, has ever been questioned. It is a great satisfaction to all who abhor brutality to know that a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has been established at Newfoundland. The leading men there are awakening 1 to the evils to which I havo referred, and ' it is to be hoped'—to use Lady Blake's words —' that their efforts to put down cruellies and unnecessary barbarities may be crowned .tfith success "