104 REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 



Mr. S. M. Biiyiiitzky, Government Agent on the islands duiing- parts 

 of tbe years 1870-71-7-5, says : " I sa-sv an approximate estimate made by 

 Mr. Elliott .... I do not think any estimate would be witliin a 

 million or two. I think he puts them at five millions, but it may be 

 three or seven millions, as they are eountless." 



Mr. G. Wardman, Government Agent on St. George Island from 1881 

 to 1885, asked as to the total number of seals on the islands, says: " I 

 never could make it ao much as Professor Elliott has done. I made 

 many estimates. I have been to all the rookeries on the islands many 

 times, and compared them with the space occupied by the carcasses on 

 the killing grounds, and T feel pretty confident that the whole number 

 has been over-estimated." He then proceeds to justify his opinion by 

 special references to rookeries on St. George and to measurements. 



Mr. T. F. Morgan, who was on the Pribyloff Islands in 18()8-f>9, and 

 again during every killing season from 1871 to 1888, as an employe of 

 the Alaska Commercial Company, says,resj)ectingthe-number of seals: 

 "I think th;it Professor Elliott has over-estimated it . . . : he laid 

 down the carcasses of seals and measured around them, and then meas- 

 ured the rookeries. . . . But they do not lie all over the territory 

 which he marked out. . . . The seals did not cover the whole area 

 as thoroughly as he measured it." 



Dr. H. H. Mclntyre, Superintendent of the Alaska Commercial Cora- 

 pany, and on the islands every year, except three, from 1870 to 1888, 

 says: "I think the number has been very largely over-estimated in the 

 reports of naturalists who have observ^ed the habits of the animals on 

 the seal islands. They have made their mistake in supposing that all 

 the ground which shows signs of having been occupied by seals is cov- 

 ered by them simultaneously, when the fact is, that theljachelor 

 66 seals may be found to-day upon a certain rookery, and another 

 time upon another place. The result is, the same animals in 

 many instances have been counted two or three times. I think the 

 estimates are fully one-third, or perhaps one-half, too high." 



367. No further estimate of the total number of seals u])on the Priby- 

 loff Islands appears to have been made until that of Mr. Elliott in 

 1890, in which the grand total arrived at is 959,303 breeding seals, in- 

 cludiii-g only 350,000 breeding females, besides a large number of bar- 

 ren females, while the number of male seals over one year old did not 

 exceed 100,000. 



368. The citations above given are sufficient to show the character of 

 the estimates of numbers made, and to indicate why it is impossible to 

 follow the changes and fluctuations in numbers of seals resorting to the 

 Pribyloff Islands directly and by these means alone. In his original 

 report of 1874, Lieutenant Maynard very sensibly remarks that the most 

 trustworthy index of the condition of the roolieries is to be found in 

 the aggregate area occupied by them at particular dates in each season, 

 rather than in actual numbers of seals, which can never be anything 

 but mere approximations. His suggestion, that plans should be made 

 and marked with the rookery limits in each year, was unfortunately not 

 carried out, and we are thus thrown back upon indirect methods of 

 instituting comparisons between the past and present condition of seal 

 life upon the islands. We can only hope that for the future steps will 

 be taken accurately to peg out or mark the limits of the existing rook- 

 eries as a criterion of changes certain to occur from year to year. 



369. The auxiliary methods which were adopted in making compari- 

 sons of the past and present condition of the rookeries, included care- 

 ful x)ersonal observation at three different periods in the season of 



