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94 SEAL FIHSERY. size and strength, called, in the technical language of the fishery, the “ King.” Around him, in moments of danger, the others rally, and either fight or fly, according to the example which he gives; but, in every case, the ill adaptation of the bodies of these animals for rapid move ment on dry land renders them an easy conquest. When I landed on the Trowbridge Shoal, the evidences of recent slaughter were scattered around in sickening profusion. A stratum of dead carcasses, several feet in depth, indi cated the success which had attended the operations of the sealers. The impression on the olfactory organs, created by the putrefying mass beneath a glowing sun, is more easily imagined than described, yet the sealers, seemingly regardless of this inconvenience, carried on the processes of cutting out and boiling the blubber with as much imperturbability as if surrounded by a garden of roses, and their health appeared to suffer no injury. The liver of the seal is their favourite delicacy. This fishery has always been conducted in an unsys tematic and unprofitable manner. It frequently happens that the number of seals killed in one tf knock down” is so great that many of them are never even skinned, but suffered to pass into a state of putrefaction, as if destroyed in mere wantonness. No advantage is taken of the skin, which is worth from Is. &d. to 2s.: the quantity of oil obtained from each seal seldom exceeds three gallons, valued at from 4s. to 6s. per gallon, being nearly equal in quality to that of the sperm whale. The result of the perpetual and unregulated destruction which I have described will manifestly be the complete extirpation of the seals in the South Australian gulfs, without any other benefit to the colony than the employ-