FUR SEALS AND OTHER LIFE, PRIBILOF ISLANDS, 1914. 3I 



the nature of fur seals might seem calculated to cause harm. That it really has no serious 

 result is evident by the ease and rapidity with which normal conditions are resumed. 

 The seals, particularly the bulls, have a powerful instinct for location, and their abihty 

 to recover their relative positions after great disturbance seems little short of miraculous. 

 While counting is still going on at one end of a rookery the space just passed over is 

 rapidly being repopulated, and within a half hour after the count is finished one finds 

 the whole rookery as if nothing had happened, the cows peacefully sleeping or nursing 

 their pups and the pups whose mothers are at sea gathered in pods playing or sleeping. 



In the course of the count considerable adroitness is required to avoid crowding the 

 pups into large pods, in which the weaker ones are exposed to the possibility of being 

 smothered by others which heap themselves over them. Out of the 93,000 pups counted 

 in 1914 only 22 came to death in this way. This loss was due partly to overzealous 

 assistants and partly to the difficulty of directing assistants in the continual clamor; 

 but when it is considered that perhaps not more than one-third of the pups so killed 

 would have reached maturity, the actual loss to the herd is seen to be so small that it is 

 scarcely worth a second thought. 



As the count must be made before any of the pups have learned to swim, the few 

 that are bom after this time can npt be enumerated. This number is very small, how- 

 ever, and only serves to make it more evident that the totals accepted are minimum figures. 

 The only further factor of uncertainty is the impossibility of securing an exact total for 

 the dead pups, some having been carried away by the foxes and others having disinte- 

 grated or been trampled out of sight before the count is made. These are the only reason- 

 able objections to stating that the pup count gives exact results, and they only serve to 

 strengthen the conviction that the totals accepted can not by any possibility be too 

 large. For, considering the welfare of the herd, the results are minimum figures and 

 therefore absolutely safe. 



The count of dead pups. — The dead pups are recorded as they are found during the 

 process of counting the live ones. They are scattered over the rookeries with consider- 

 able regularity, and the percentage found on the different rookeries varies but little. 

 They lie in various stages of decomposition, sometimes stretched out on the sand and 

 sometimes nearly hidden from view in crevices between the rocks. As successive sec- 

 tions of rookery space are cleared in the counting of the live pups one member of the 

 counting squad makes it his special duty to pace the ground and record all the dead 

 pups, while as the work progresses other members of the party from time to time call 

 his attention to dead pups noted in obscure places. After a given breeding area is 

 finished the adjacent hauling grounds also are searched for dead pups, and so far as 

 possible identifiable remains are noted when strewn about fox dens encountered in going 

 to and from the rookeries. It is evident therefore that practically all dead pups are 

 enumerated. 



Participants in the count, and results. — The count of pups was made from July 29 to 

 August 5. The Canadian and Japanese experts were invited to join with the Americans- 

 and the services were enlisted also of Mr. A. G. Whitney, school-teacher, on St. PauJ 

 Island, and of Mr. A. H. Proctor, agent, and Mr. G. Dallas Hanna, school-teacher, on 

 St. George Island. The count, therefore, was conducted and subscribed to by the 

 following persons : W. H. Osgood, G. H. Parker, E. A. Preble, G. D. Hanna, A. H Proctor, 



