ESTIMATES OF NUMBERS. 81 



pups. The average adult female is 4 feet long, and measures an equal distance from 

 tip to tip of her outstretched fore-flippers. In a standing position she would need at 

 least 3 square feet, but as the cows are constantly moving about, and coming and 

 going to and from the sea, it is impossible to limit one to such a space. 



A MORE RATIONAL UNIT OF SPACE. 



During the past two seasons an effort was made to test the unit of space which 

 the average seal occupies. A count of 050 closely crowded dead bodies on Poloviua 

 killing ground showed that each body occupied a space of 13 square feet. The 

 arrangement and proximity of these bodies corresponded very nearly to the condition 

 of the massed rookery where the animals are stretched out sleeping. On Ardiguen 

 rookery a harem containing thirty three sleeping cows and pups was observed on a 

 flat space circumscribed by stones in such a way that its boundaries could be definitely 

 located. Later in the season, when the seals had abandoned the spot, it was measured 

 and found to give 8 square feet to each animal, old and young. This may be regarded 

 as an example of extreme massing, as the animals could not have been packed closer 

 together. The great sand flat of Tolstoi, the most densely massed rookery ground on 

 the islands, was roughly measured late in the season of 1896 and found to contain 

 about 140,000 square feet. Each of the 11,000 animals estimated for this area 

 would therefore have a space of about 13 square feet. Messrs. True and Townsend, 

 in 1895, found the average space for each individual adult seal in unmassed areas, 

 as on Lagoon or Tolstoi cliffs, to be 40 square feet. For the massed areas a space 

 one-half as great, or 23 square feet, was arbitrarily assumed. 



It is true that Mr. Elliott justifies, in part, his small unit of space by certain 

 references to the coming and going of the animals. He asserts that after the pups 

 are born the individual cows are not on "their allotted space one-fourth of the time,'' 

 and that the females "almost double their number on the rookery ground without 

 expanding its original limits." But Mr. Elliott failed to grasp what this really 

 meant. He sees in it only justification for the unit of space which he has assigned 

 to the individual animals. It should have called his attention to the fact that the 

 breeding seals which he saw before him, and which he was attempting to enumerate, 

 were but a part and not the whole of the rookery population. 



THE ESTIMATE FOR KITOVI AND LUKANIN ROOKERIES. 



When we leave the general features of this estimate and come to consider its 

 details we find still less reason to be satisfied with it. Of all the rookeries Kitovi and 

 Lukaniu have been most minutely studied and counted during the seasons of 1896 and 

 1897. Their present conditions are absolutely known. They may be taken as typical 

 examples. To these two rookeries in 1874 Mr. Eli.iott ascribes a total population of 

 335,000 "breeding seals and young," or 158,000 breeding females, and, using his 

 estimate of 15 cows to an average harem, 10,000 active bulls. At present there are 

 318 bulls, or less than one-thirtieth the former number, and 9,000 breeding females, 

 less than one-seventeenth the former number. 



To anyone who understands the situation of these rookeries this is simply absurd. 

 It would be impossible to plat 10,000 harems on the space they occupy at present or 

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