ESTIMATES OF NUMBERS. 8t 
pups. The average adult female i 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 650 closely crowded dead bodies on Polovina 
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 46 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 thg 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 
Lukanin 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. Eliott ascribes a total population of 
335,000 “breeding seals and young,” or 158,000 breedin g 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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