DEAD PUPS ON TOLSTOI. 349 



An old bull snarls at a pup and rolls him over endwise. The pup seems to stand 

 it well enough. It is wonderful how tough they are. 



Nothing resembling virgins are yet seen except in the harem of 6 cows first 

 mentioned. This bull finally loses all his cows but one. She is broad headed, like a 

 yearling bachelor. One of the neeing cows is taken in charge by another bull. Her 

 owner tries to regain her, but can not. 



TOLSTOI. 



Tolstoi rookery was inspected this afternoon for dead pups. This is the rookery 

 upon which the dead pups of 1892 were recorded by Mr. Macoun. 



The rookery lies in part upon a sandy area of considerable extent back from the 

 water's edge and in part on ledges of rocks under steep cliffs. It was on the sandy 

 part that the great mortality was noted. Above the sandy stretch there are many 

 harems located upon the long rocky slope covered with large bowlders. 



When the rookery was first visited this year the harems were closely packed 

 along the edge of the water and under the edge of the rocky slope, leaving much of 

 the sand bare. At the point where the mass was thickest a cliff forming a projecting 

 angle of the slope juts into the sandy tract. From this angle to the sand beach was 

 a great wedge-shaped mass around which the bachelors hauled to get in behind. 

 From this mass most of the harems now to be found above have come, though a part 

 of them have come up over the rocky cliff at accessible points. When the rookery 

 was first seen the entire upper space was covered and held by idle bulls. 



DEAD PUPS. 



As in 1892, so to day, this rookery shows the largest number of dead pups on St. 

 Paul, and it shows its excess of mortality about this jutting cliff and on the sandy 

 beach at the point where the greatest mass of seals was located. 1 This area of sand 

 is now covered black with pups, and scattered over it are a large number of dead pups 

 flattened out or partially covered with sand. With a glass from a position just above 

 the green cliff and near one of Mr. Townsend's crosses 88 dead pups are counted. It 

 is possible that a number are hidden among the masses of living pups, as in many 

 cases they are playing about and over their dead companions. One hundred would 

 probably be a fairer estimate. 2 



At the angle before spoken of where the seals were thickest, and where a great 

 amount of fighting was going on at the time the rookery was first visited, there are 

 between 20 and 25 dead pups to be seen within a small area. The rest are scattered 

 over the length of the sandy tract. The angle here resembles very much a similar 

 angle at Polovina, where 8 dead pups were counted in 2 harems. When we consider the 

 great mass of pups at this point on Tolstoi, numbering many thousands, as compared 

 with other rookeries, the percentage of dead pups, placing the number at 100, is not 



1 See account of the formation of this mass of seals in notes of 1897 for last week in June. The 

 seals massed against this jutting rocky point as the nearest way to reach the slope behind, up which 

 the harems spread. 



- When these pups were counted later on, the number was found to aggregate 1,495. This shows 

 how it came that from mere casual observations the great mortality of pups was unnoticed or 

 underestimated in earlier years. 



