696 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



for even at their inaxiinum not more than lialf of the cows actnally 

 belonging to a given rookery were present. Of this fact Mr. Elliott 

 was not fnlly aware. Moreover he infers that the 2 year old cows are 

 on the rookeries at this time, whereas they do not come on the rookeries 

 until the rutting season for the adults is over, in the last week of July 

 and the tirst of August. These two important matters must always be 

 kept in mind in weighing the value of Mr. Elliott's estimate. 



The surveys recently made u[»on the islands show clearly that Mr. 

 Elliott's maps and surveys are only rough sketches. Captain Moser, 

 as a result of his investigations in 1896, said that Mr. Elliott's shore line 

 " rarely stood the test of an instrumental angle." If this be true of the 

 fixed and definite sea margin, what must be the inference in the case 

 of the changing and shifting boundaries of the rookeries? The state- 

 ment that " there is no more difticulty in surveying these seal margins 

 * * * than there is in drawing sights along and around the curbs of a 

 stone fence surrounding a field " is by no means reassuring to one who 

 has investigated the breeding grounds in the height of the season. A 

 man can not ai)proach within 50 to 100 feet of the line of breeding seals 

 except at the risk of his life. He must therefore note his boundaries 

 from a distance and make his measuremi'nts after the seals have left 

 in the winter. The band of breeding seals is of every conceivable 

 width, and to reach an average estimate of its area on all the rookeries 

 would require thousands of measurements. But after the seals have 

 left the grouiul the making of these measurements becomes a mere 

 matter of guesswork, as no marks are left to show where the boundaries 

 were. In view of the fact that Mr. Elliott gives us no more information 

 about his surveys of the rookeries than the statement above quoted, 

 we can not concede to them a greater value. 



The unit of space here assigned to the individual seal must also be 

 objected to. The statement that the female occupies a little less than 

 2 square feet is of course a slip of the pen or a misprint for 2 feet 

 square. This Mr. Elliott has himself corrected in his 1890 report. But 

 the 2 feet square or 4 square feet intended, in which it is assumed that 

 the cow brings forth her young and spends her time on the rookery, is 

 still far too small for the crowded areas, while in the rocky beaches it 

 is perfectly absurd. The average animal is 1 feet long and measures 

 3J feet from tip to tip of her outstretched foreflippers. Our observa- 

 tions show that on the most densely massed breeding grounds, where 

 the cows are packed together as closely as they can be, they still 

 require a space of from 8 to 12 S(iuare feet. But these massed areas 

 are but a fraction of the whole ground, Mr. Elliott, in not allowing 

 for the absence of at least one half of the cows and in including the 

 2-yearolds, unintentionally reduces in large measure the error which 

 would naturally result from the smallness of his unit of space. But 

 even this only tends to add confusion to the estimate. 



Page 85: As a concrete illustration of the unsatisfactory nature of 

 Mr. Elliott's estimate, we may cite the proportion which it assigns to 

 Kitovi and Lukanin rookeries. Tiiey are given a total of 335,000 breed- 

 ing seals and young, or 160,000 adult breeding seals in round numbers, 

 of which, according to his estimate (15 cows) of the average harem, 

 about 10,000 are bulls. These rookeries have been carefully studied 

 during the past two seasons, and we know exactly how many breeding 

 families are on them at present. For Kitovi rookery we know abso- 

 lutely by a count of pups the number of cows which belong to it; we 

 can estimate closely for Lukanin, and as a result we find 318 breeding 

 bulls and 9,300 cows. Mr. Elliott's figures would require us to believe 



