THE HEIGHT OF THE SEASON. 53. 
was, on June 28, represented by four of these monster harems located at intervals 
along the shore and projecting but slightly above the bowlder beach. They were then 
on the point of breaking, and already around the edges were numbers of small harems 
of one or two cows which had plainly been stolen from the larger mass. In the 
course of a few days thereafter the disintegration of these abnormal harems began, and 
they became.broken up into numerous smaller families under hitherto idle bulls. The 
seals later became spread back over the entire flat. A similar course of development 
marked the formation of all the large masses on Reef rookery. ; 
Where the rookeries occupied the narrow bowlder beach, as on Kitovi and Lukanin, 
_-Lagoon or Gorbatch, the distribution of the harems was more regular, and when the 
period of scattering and fusion came, they were united in a more or less even band 
throughout the entire length of the rookery. 
DAILY “ROOKERY COUNTS. 
With a view of determining the relative condition of the rookeries from day to 
day, daily counts were begun on Lukanin and Kitovi rookeries with the first arrival 
of cows and were kept up throughout the season, or from June 12 to July 31. A part of 
the record of these counts has already been given to illustrate the arrival of the cows. 
The fall record will be found in Appendix I. The following is a synopsis of the count 
-on a part of Kitovi rookery known as the Amphitheater: 
Synopsis of Kitovi rookery, 1897. 
Cows 
Date. present. 
THE HEIGHT OF THE SEASON. 
These counts show that the population of breeding cows gradually increases from 
the beginning of the season, about June 10, until a climax is reached about the middle 
« July. It then decreases until at the close of the breeding season, about August 1, 
numbers about one-half the maximum population present at any one time, or about 
1e-fourth of the actual rookery population. There is a temporary fluctuation during 
the first ten days of August, while the virgin 2-year-old cows are present on the 
rookeries. For the rest of the season the adult population remains at about the 
point reached at the end of July, probably varying more or less from day to day 
according to the condition of the weather. 
It had until 1896 been currently believed that at the period known as the “height 
of the season,” say from July 10 to 20, rookery conditions were fixed and all or prac- 
’ Leally all the breeding animals present. The counting of pups in August in 1896 first 
dispelled this error, by showing that the pups outnumbered two to one the breeding 
females counted in the height of the season. 
