ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 695 



Page 78: Tlie statement here made by Mr. Elliott that prior to his 

 labors "nothing to guide to a fair or even approximate estimate as to 

 the number of fur seals on these islands" had been done, while true for 

 the Eussian period is certainly unjust to Capt Charles Bryant, who in 

 1SG9 made an investigation of tlie condition of the herd and cou- 

 striicted an estimate of the number of seals, in our judgment, quite as 

 correct as Mr. Elliott's. In the Bulletin of the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology, Cambridge, 1870, Vol. II, page 100, Captain Bryant 

 makes the following statement: 



" There are at least 12 miles of shore line on the island of St. Paul's 

 occupied by the seals as breeding grounds, with an average width of 

 15 rods. There being about L'O seals to the square rod, gives 1,152,000 

 as the whole number of breeding males and females. Deducting one- 

 tenth for males leaves 1,037,800 breeding females." A separate esti- 

 mate on the same basis for St. George is made, giving one-half as many 

 to that island. With this total of approximately 1,500,000 breeding 

 females (not including the young) for the two islands, contrast the esti- 

 mate of 3,193,000 "breeding seals and young" arrived at by Mr. Elliott. 



Crude as Captain Bryant's estimate is, both as to methods and result, 

 it is the pioneer work in the line of acreage enumerations of the seals, 

 and as such should receive due credit. The work was done in 18G9 and 

 its results published in 1870, two years before Mr. Elliott began his 

 investigations. 



Page 78: The law of distribution stated by Mr. Elliott is relatively 

 true, but can not be exactly so. It is physically impossible to stow as 

 many seals on a slope covered with coarse rocks as in a basin-shai^ed 

 area free from stones. As the herd declines, the harems become more 

 and more separated, especially in rocky places, where the stations are 

 not equally convenient. In other words, while in Mr. Elliott's time the 

 rookeries were as solidly packed as the nature of the ground would 

 permit, they are not crowded to the same extent in their present 

 shrunken area. If there were in his day five times as many seals as 

 now, it does not follow that the rookeries occupied five times the pres- 

 ent space. As a matter of fact, they did not. 



Page 79: The descrijotiou of the period between July 10 and 20 is 

 relatively true. To the eye of the casual observer there is little change 

 in the appearance of the breeding grounds. But as a matter of fact 

 at this time the greatest changes of the season are going on, the differ- 

 ence in population between one day and the next being anywhere from 

 10 to 30 per cent, as shown by actual counts made during the season 

 of 1897. On a breeding area called the "Amphitheater," on Kitovi 

 rookery, the following is the daily count of cows: 



July 10 660 July 16 678 



11 703 17 698 



13 654 18 566 



14 556 19 556 



15 703 20 429 



During this period there was a gradual increase of harems from 35 

 on the 10th to 46 on the 13th, and by the 25th there were 53. Corre- 

 sponding to these changes in population there was a gradual and marked 

 expansion of the territory occupied by the seals, due to the jDodding 

 out of the pups and the scattering of the cows in following them. 



From these investigations it will be seen that at the time when Mr. 

 Elliott supposed the rookeries to be most stable they were in fact most 

 unsettled. The maximum population instead of covering a definite 

 period, represented at best a single day somewhere about the middle 

 of July when the arrivals and departures practically balanced each other, 



