FUR-SEAL HEED OF ALASKA. 51 



in 1890 will suffice as to the details for all of the 17 breeding grounds 

 on the Pribilof Islands, which were covered in the same manner, 

 to wit, he says (Hearing No. 4, Committee on Expenditures in the 

 Department of Commerce and Labor, July 11, 1911, pp. 186-187, 

 190-191, and 192): 



But I had no idea as I began the work and completed it, insofar as the landed 

 area went, of making a census of the seals upon the line of Capt. Bryant's speculation, 

 because I early saw that there were so many variations in the sizes of the seals, the 

 irregular massing and unmassing of the harems, that the plan of locating just so many 

 adult seals to a given area was impracticable. 



But as I hung over these rookeries day after day I became impressed with the fact 

 that no matter whether the mother seals were present on the ground, or absent on 

 their food excursions, their pups, or young ones, never left the immediate area of 

 their birthplace on the rookery up to a time in the season not later than the 10th or 

 20th of each July; that if I counted them in a given area during that period I should 

 then know just how many cows belonged to it, and only by taking the pups as my 

 guide could I get at the real number of females; the males were steadfastly on the 

 ground all the time, and then a general estimate for the number of Aargin females 

 could be made upon the ratio of this pup count, as it was a basis of the birth rate of 

 the entire herd. 



While this subject grew upon me, I called the attention of my associates on the 

 island (St. Paul, 1872-73) to it. One of these gentlemen, Mr. William Kapus, was 

 an unusually well-educated man (the company's general manager), and a man of 

 affairs as well. He took deep interest in the solution of this seal-space problem as I 

 presented it to him in the following form; also Dr. Kramer, the surgeon, another cul- 

 tivated, scholarly man, aided me in the inquiry: 



1. The seals haul out on these breeding grounds with great evenness of massing — • 

 never crowded unduly here, or scattered there — so evenly that if suddenly every 

 mother were to appear at the height of the season there would be just room enough 

 for all, without suffocating or inconveniencing their lives on the rocks. 



2. That in estimating the number of seals in the breeding grounds we must make 

 the number of pups present at the height of the season the unit of calculation, because 

 their mothers are never all present at any one time, not half, and at many times not 

 one- third of them are; that the height of the breeding season is between July 10 and 

 20 annually. 



Upon these two fundamental propositions I stirred up a vigorous discussion and 

 examination as to their truth or untruth among the white men then on the islands, 

 or South Island especially, late in 1872, and until the close of the season of 1873 the 

 settlement of this question was left open. Then each and every white man on the 

 islands at that time (there were nine of them) subscribed heartily to the truth of 

 these, my assumptions, as a true working hypothesis. 



Just because I had traveled over these rookeries day in and day out, when seals 

 were there and when absent, was why I recognized this law of distribution, and I 

 "will safely venture to say that I have taken two steps to Jordan's one in this work 

 on the rookery grounds; with every fissure and embedded lava rock (these loose 

 ■"bowlders weighing tons" on Kito\-i and only few such "'bowlders" on Gorbatch), 

 I am familiar, and 1 found to my surprise, at first, that Kitovi was an ideal massin* 

 ground for the breeding seals, and Gorbatch also; that these jagged rocks, nearly all 

 deeply imbedded in the detritus of the cinder and lava slopes, actually carried more 

 seals than if they were perfect plane surfaces. Wherever I found a miniature lava 

 butte on these breeding grounds (they are all of volcanic superstructure) that th^ 

 seals could not scale or otherwise occupy, the area of the same was deducted from 

 the sum of square feet belonging to the ground, and I never made the "blunder of 

 assuming the same distribution everywhere," by taking this precaution, and in the 

 following way: First, I carefully located the herds as they lay on the several breed- 

 ing grounds during the height of the season, i. e., between July 10 and 20, which I 

 discovered to be the time in 1872 ; this location was rapidly and accurately made on 

 a land chart of the rookery ground prepared early in the season and before the seals 

 had hauled out. By ha-ving these charts all ready, with the stations from which my 

 base lines and angles were taken, all plainly in my vdew when the seals hauled out, 

 it was a simple thing to place the bearings of the massed herds on the chart; the 

 reef and Gorbatch grounds made a busy day's work, and no more for me, because 

 thus prepared; the same of Zapadnie. Tolstoi easily finished in half a day; same of 

 Lukannon, same of Kitovi, Polavina a short day's work, while Novastoshals, or the 

 large'Northeast Point breeding ground, took the best part of two days. The St.' 

 George rookeries were handled in even shorter time by this method. 



