The Days of a Man [1897 



Losses from hookworm mainly took place before 

 the month of August, practically all later decima- 

 tion being due to slaughter of the mothers feeding 

 at sea; as to this I may add that in 1897 some 

 15,000 healthy pups were starved to death. To get 

 rid of the pest, we filled with rocks the sand areas 

 or "death traps" on Zapadni. It was impossible 

 to do the same on the great beach at Tolstoi; but 

 with the continued shrinking of the herd that stretch 

 was soon abandoned, the animals afterward con- 

 fining themselves to the rocks. And recent investi- 

 g ators nave discovered no evidences of the parasite 

 anywhere on the islands. 



As already explained, a part of our plan for the 

 second summer was to test the practicability of 

 two suggestions (branding and fencing) made by 

 Townsend and True in their report of 1894. 

 Branding The purpose of branding was to render all skins 

 of young females commercially valueless. To this 

 end we made use of an electrical machine devised 

 by Mr. Farmer; branding with hot irons was also 

 undertaken by Murray, who had had large ex- 

 perience on Western cattle ranges. Both methods 

 were successful enough, but the advantage gained 

 seemed hardly to justify the suffering temporarily 

 entailed on the animals themselves. Hot irons were, 

 however, used later for the marking of individuals 

 in order to trace their movements, and to ascertain 

 their length of life. Concerning this particular 

 matter, Hanna reports that females branded by 

 Clark in 1903 appeared on the rookeries as late as 

 1919. 

 The second scheme, which proved an entire failure, 



C 586] 



