The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-12-12 00:00:00

Referring to this subject, the Daily Telegraph also, In a
leader, tap:—

. . .Fortunately or unfortmiately, it seems not at
all improbable that a genuine sealskin jacket will
before long he almost as impo=sible an article of the
ordinary feminine toilette as a string of brilliants it.-
self. Some thirty years ago sealskin was common
enough. Boxes were covered with it—gloves and driv-
ing rugs were made of it —coatermongera and cabmen
cut their caps from it. Then came the time when
some cunning furrier discovered how to dye it a rich
dark brown, and to give it that exquisitely soft and
downy texture which is its chief charm. At once ladies
adopted the luxury. It was soon found that for
cloaks, jackets, muffs, dainty little hats, collars, cuffs,
bags, portemonnaies, for a thousand other articles
of feminine use, it was the most delightful, the most
beautiful, the most inthspensable of all possible mate-
rials. The dentand for it increased with a rapidity
almost marvellous, and the fashion, instead of
itself out, has, if anything, steadily increased. Indeed,
the best Alaska sealskins, like the furs of the sable,
the silver fox, and the Russian sea otter, command an
altogether fancy price, and a handsome jacket of close
texture and uniform colour, with no white hairs to
break the continuity of its tint, will fetch as many
guineas as five-and-twenty years ago it would have
fetched half crowns. The result is that the limitless
seals have had waged against them for now several years
what practically atnouuts ti a war of extermination.
Not so long ago the seal was COllllllOll enough—as
readers of '"l'be Antiquary" need hardly be reminded
—along the Scotch coast. and in Pennant's time a regular
fishery existed in the Skerries. Now the hunter has to
go farther north
_thaw Cape
.Wrath or even than the

Orkneys. The fisheries of Alaska and the Aleutian
Weeds—the most valuable in the world—are, or were
till very recently, a monopoly in the hands of the
Russian Government; but with this exception the
Northern seas are perfectly open, and every year a
little fleet of sealers— chiefly from Stockholm and
Dundee—returns laden with oil and skins. The
time chosen is unfortunately the very period that
of all others ought to be kept close. Except for a
very short part of the year the seal lives to all in-
tents and purposes on the open sea. But the
female, when about to bring forth, seeks the
shelter of the shore, wheye she suckles and watches her
cube until they are old enough to shift for themselves.
At this time, however, whenever there are eeals along
the coast, large herds of them will be found trom a
quarter to half a mile inland. The proportions are
very rencli those of a drove id deer. The main body
will consist of often several hundred females, each
with one or two helpless little ones, while the males
hang about the outskirts of the flock, and relieve the
monotony of their existence on shore by obstinate
and sanguinary pitched battles with one another.
As soon as a herd of this kind is spied, the
boats are manned, and the whole vessel's crew,
armed with bludgeons and axes, starts upon a
"cutting-out expedition." at the horrors of which
humanity may well shudder. The only way to effec-
tually kill a seal with completeness and despatch
is by a heavy blow with a bludgeon, or a sleep cut
with an axe, so as either to crush or sever the
nasal bones; and when the boats' crew have got
ashore an indiscriminate slaughter is commenced,
the whole herd being often butchered before a
single one can reach the water's edge. The tumult
and skurry of the attack over, the real work com-
mences. The adult quarry is skinned with all pos-
sible Mete, and as often as not with the life still
in it. The cubs, who lie moaning and whinnying
by the side of their dams, are knocked on the
head if big enough to give their fur any value, and
if too small to be worth the skinning are left
without even the mercy of a coup de grace. Old seal
hunters tell us—and we can well believe it—that ;
takes a man some time to get used to such cruel
butchery, and that the half-human wailing of the little
calves as they flop and roll about the mangled carcase
of their mother is something that, until he is hardened
to the work, will make his sleep myeasy at night. To
put the thing in another shape, we may roughly say
that the trim sealskin jacket of which its fair owner is
so proud, which becomes her so %ell, and which keeps
out the cold, represents some half-dozen dams who
have more or less been skinned alive, while their little
ones have been left to die in all the slow agony of
starvation. Mephistopheles himself might weil laugh
I his own laugh at poor Marguerite's ignorant delight
I over such a lure.

There are some facts in the great world's course
which, much as we may regret them, we are yet
unable in any way to alter. Nothing will ever make
foxhunting a pleasant process for the fox, or shed a
tranquil joy over the prize pig's last moments.
Seal-hunting is dangerous and uncomfortable work,
and not unnaturally the one object of the Beal-hunter
is to get the greatest possible number of skins
with the smallest possible expenditure of time and
trouble. The work is butchery pure and simple,
and much as we may regret its horrible features,
we cannot possibly hope to see them refined
away, or expect the day when an officer
of the Royal, Soeiety for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals shall be appointed to each
Dundee sealing brig. The simple f Rote stand thus—
that a sealekin jacket is made of sealskin ; that, to get
the skin, we must knock the seal on the nose • and
that, if the fur is to have a proper glees and lustre
on it, the seal must be skinned as nearly as may be
alive. Apart, however, from considerations of huma-
nity, it is fad becoming a serious question whether the
present demand for sealskin jackets is not likely to
end in the total extermination of the seal itself.
The Norwegian and Swedish Governments have had
the matter under their consideration, and have com-
municated with our own Board of Trade; and
there is, it seems, a ueanimous consensus of opinion
to the effect that, unless a close time is adopted,
the seal, if not entirely exterminated, will soon
become so reduced in numbers as to render the fishing
unremunerative. Mr. Frederick Jennings has visited
Dundee on behalf of the Board of Trade, and the
opinion at Dundee would seem to be that some inter-
national arrangement ought to be entered into in
virtue of which the open time for seal fishing should be
restricted to the forty days between the sth of April
and the 15th of May. The proposal is a humane one,
but it is not so easy to see how it can be carried out.
Even if the North seas were under our exclusive juris-
diction, we could hardly be expected to tell off a screw
frigate to keep down seal poachers, while, to do the
work efficiently, we should want not one screw frigate,
but a couple of dozen. As long as ladies are willing,
and indeed anxious, to give fifty guineas for a hand-
some eealekin jacket, the war of extermination against
seals will be relentlessly waged. The time will come—
perhaps before very long—when there will be no ele-
phant tusks for billiard balls., no sealskin's forjackets, no
sable tail for trimmings and muffs, no ostrich plumes
for court headdreeeee, and no whalebone for feminine
uses. The demand for billiard balls is, it is true, almost
exclusively confined to the nobler sex; but in 'float
other caws the war of extermination will be found
to have been waged in the milliner's behalf. When
we read of a lady appearing at a grand ball, her
dress trimmed with the plumage of eight hundred
canaries—when we see jittle humming-birds worn
as an ornament upon hats—or when we admire,
in spite of ourselves, a sealskin jacket which has
cost more cruel butchery than would be needed to
feed a whole parish for a week—we then recNnise the
lamentable and unalterable truth that humanity
towards the lower animals is a sentiment, which, how-
ever commendable in itself, must yet be strictly
subordinated to the necessities of a lady's toilette.