708 



ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



Page 362: In a note to this page Mr. Elliott gives a table of drives 

 for the year 1872 from the rookeries of St. George. In view of what 

 he has just said of the severity of the drives in causing the spreading 

 out of Zapadni and East rookeries, we may extend this table for a few 

 years subsequent to 1882, when he says the terriiic driving that has 

 done such mischief began, and see what the result will be: 



Numher of drives, St. George Island. 



llaiiling ground. 



Zapadni 



Starayii Artel 



Nortli 



East 



1884. 



If we carry on the record of Zapadni, we find the following result: 

 1885, 6 drives; 1880, 7; 1887, 6, etc. Nothing more conclusive of the 

 utter folly of the theory of the scraping of the rookeries in these years 

 could be needed. No abnormal increase in the number of the drives 

 occurred in 1882, and in sul)se(jnent years they steadily diminished. 

 The reduced condition of the rookery made it not worth while to make 

 drives. 



Page 366: It is only necessary to refer to the i)receding note on 

 Zapadni rookery to appreciate the untruthfulness — one might almost 

 say malice — of this theory of the " raking and dinning" of the hauling 

 grounds. Any reasonable observer should have been staggered at 

 liuding in 1890 3,275 feet of rookery front for a rookery, where in 1872- 

 1874, when it was nearly three times as large, according to his own 

 figures, it had only 900 feet of shore front. But to Mr. Elliott the fig- 

 ures were infallible, if not reasonable. If we complete the record of 

 drives for East rookery, begun in the preceding note, we find that in 

 1885 there were but (5 drives; in 1880, 8, and in 1887, 9. 



Page 370: The supposition that there are natural enemies which 

 depend upon the fur seal for subsistence and whose ravages on the 

 herd increase in proportion as it diminishes has no basis in knowledge. 

 The sharks Mr. Elliott mentions do not kill fur seals or any other large 

 animals. The Great Killer devours a large number of pups about the 

 islands, apparently visiting thein in the spring and in the lall on its 

 periods of migration, but there is no evidence that its hunting of the 

 fur seals is more than an incident. It certainly does not depend upon 

 them for food. The only important natural enemies of the young fur 

 seals are the storms of winter and possibly starvation due to lack of 

 success in getting food. These causes act only in proportion to the size 

 of the herd. No reference is made here to the natural causes of death 

 through Uncinaria and trampling, of which Mr. Elliott knew nothing. 



Page 371: The purely imaginative estimate here given of the amount 

 of food eaten by the fur seals has no value. It has already been dis- 

 cussed in the earlier re])ort of 1872-1874, from which it is here quoted. 



It is difficult to treat with patience such a statement as the one here 

 made — that "those (males) si^ared from the club annually daring the 

 past twenty years were rendered useless for rookery service from the 

 immediate or subsequent effect of severe overland driving wlienever 

 they lived through it." It is impossible to harmonize such a statement 

 with the known fact that hauling grounds continued to yield 100,000 

 males each year during this period and remained properly stocked with 



