FUR-SEAL HEED OF ALASKA. 27 



Dr. Jordan's "perfect agi-eement" with the British agents was a simple deUisioii 

 which he so joyfully announced to the United States Senate, through Senator Perkins, 

 in these words: "England shows every indication of a desire to" do the fair thing. 

 This intention is especially clear in the fact that she has sent an honorable commission 

 which is familiar with all the facts ascertained by us, the head of the commission 

 having been with me every day throughoiit the summer, and he and I being in agree- 

 ment on all questions of prilicy, as well as on all matters of fact, so far as was developed 

 by our conversation during the expedition." (Congressional Record, Feb. 28, 1897, 

 p. 2619.) 



How badly Dr. Jordan failed to understand his British colleague was made plain 

 by that gentleman's report to his Government, issued ]\Iay 10, 1897, in which Dr. 

 Jordan was taught the sober lesson that Prof. Thompson did not subscribe to him in 

 any cjuestion of policy respecting the management of the fur-seal herd and to no 

 essential details of fact. (Report of Prof. D'Arcv Thompson on his mission to Bering 

 Sea in 1896, dated Mar. 4, 1897; U. S., Nov. 3, 1897.) 



Now that Dr. Jordan has given public evidence of his utter inability to understand 

 what his own field associate on the seal grounds in 1896 intended to say or do, I believe 

 I have a good right to show that Dr. Jordan has made an equally grave blunder in 

 regard to what I did on the seal islands in 1872-1874, and is equally incompetent to 

 understand what I have said. In the final report of his investigation above men- 

 tioned he devotes a large space to the subject of my work on the census of the fur- 

 seal herds in 1872-1874, and in this space endeavors to show that I was "merely 

 guessing." and making "Mr. Elliott wholly devoid of mathematical sense, or else 

 must have failed to appreciate what his figures really meant." 



In Dr. Jordan's preliminary report of 1896 (Treasury Department Doc. No. 1913) 

 he alludes to this census work of mine in no such language, and mildly doubts the 

 probability of my figures being right. He does not in this report give me the warrant 

 to handle him without gloves which appears in this, his final report, and to handle 

 him at once on this question is both my pleasure and a public duty. 



Let me describe my early mission and its auspices. I first set out in April. 1872, 

 for the seal islands to gather information and collect for the Smithsonian Institution, 

 When I arrived on the islands April 22, 1872, I landed there without the slightest 

 pressure from anyone or instructions to work out a case for lawyers and diplomats to 

 tinker over and botch. I was to get the data as to the life history of the fur seal by 

 observing that life on the ground, and to make as full a collection of the skins, 

 skeletons, etc., as the circumstances of my living on the islands would permit. 



I was received in the most cordial manner on the islands by both Government and 

 lessee agents; every facility given me to work, and everything that I questioned or 

 inqiiired into was answered and opened in perfect good "faith and to the best of the 

 ability of those men. I quickly made myself acquainted with enough of the Russian 

 language so that I could freely get the personal ideas and facts possessed by the Aleuts 

 or ualiA^es bearing on the seals, thus checking my inquiries from one person to another. 

 I never was misinformed by design, and by so doing never permitted myself to be 

 deceived on that score. I devoted three consecutive seasons. 1872. 1873, and 1874, 

 to close biological study of the fur-seal life, spending the winter of 1872-73 on the 

 islands so that I could see with my own eyes the entire routine of arrival and depar- 

 ture of the seals from their haunts on the islands. The re.sult of these studies was 

 first briefly epitomized and published by the Treasury Department in 1874, and 

 finally, when I found that I could not arrange my private affairs so as to permit of 

 a two years' absence from home in order to study the Russian herd, I gave my elabo- 

 rated work of 1872-1874 to the late Gen. Francis A. Walker, at his solicitation, with 

 the sanction of the Smithsonian Institution, for publication as xme of the initial 

 monographs of the Tenth Census. United States of America. 



In this monograph it became imperative to omit much detail in the line of my 

 record of daily observations on the rookeries, because if it were all incorporated the 

 volume would be too bulky, compared ^\'ith the other monographs ahead, for the 

 funds of the Census Office to print; therefore my original colored rookery maps and hun- 

 dreds of notes and illustrations, carefully drawn from life, were excluded very reluc- 

 tantly by the authorities, and only then because they believed that 1 had covered 

 the ground fully, even in their abridged form. When I suggested to Prof. Baird 

 that all of the details of my chapter on the census of the seats — pictures, maps, and 

 all — should be incorporated, he replied, sayirg that I had made it clear enough and 

 eai=ily tuiderstood in the abridged version. 



Repeatedly, since the ptiblication of that monograph in 1882, has this question 

 of the popidation of the fur-seal rookeries on the Pribilof Islands been raised in my 

 presence by naturalists of far greater aljility than Dr. Jordan, and I have never failed 

 to satisfy them of the substantial soundness of my views and figin-es. Now that 



