90 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 
B. THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE HERD. 
THE CENSUS. 
In the work of the present investigation of the fur-seal herd the most important 
consideration was the making of as accurate an enumeration as possible of the number. 
of animals. This has always formed an important part of every investigation in 
the past. But, as we have seen, the results have been anything but satisfactory. The 
great multitude of the animals, when the herd was five times as great as at present, 
may have left no other result possible. At the present time, even with the herd so 
greatly reduced, the task of making a complete census of all the rookeries is by no 
means an easy one, as the details of our work, which will be found in the Daily 
Journal, will indicate. 
ITS DIFFICULTY. 
Without going into detail here, we may mention among the difficulties of the 
problem the fringe of idle bulls, savage and immovable, that skirts each rookery, the 
danger of stampeding the rookeries themselves, the broken and irregular nature of 
the ground, and, finally, the constantly shifting nature of the rookery population. 
These are some of the merely mechanical difficulties. But more serious for us than. 
any of these was the fact that at the outset the conditions of the problem before us 
were not at all understood. It had been currently accepted that during a period 
between the 10th and 20th of July the breeding rookeries were at their height and 
practically all the animals present. Upon this supposition all previous estimates had 
been based. With this idea in mind we began our work, only to find as we advanced 
that the supposition was unfounded. , 
For the smaller rookeries of St. George, and such rookeries as Kitovi, Lagoon, 
Zapadni Reet, and the cliff portions of Polovina and Tolstoi, it was found possible to 
make a count of the individual animals by harems. This was accordingly done. On 
the greater rovukeries, as those of Northeast Point, Reef, and Zapadni, no count of 
individuals was possible, and for these rookeries only harems were enumerated. 
ACTUAL COUNTS. 
Our count of individual cows in 1896 covered about one-fifth of the rookery space 
on St. Paul Island, embracing 1,245 harems, with a total population of 16,679 cows, 
or an average of 13.4 cows to each harem at the height of the season. The average 
harem of the individual rookeries and parts of rookeries counted ranged from 11 in 
the lowest to 17.3 in the highest. The lower averages represented thin and scattered 
portions of rocky breeding ground, and none of the counted area contained any of 
the massed conditions characteristic of portions of the larger rookeries. The highest 
average belonged to Kitovi rookery, the largest continuous rookery space counted. 
It contained 3,152 cows in 182 harems, an average of 17.3 cows to the harem. The 
conditions of this rookery as a whole being more typical of the general conditions 
prevailing on the larger rookeries, its average was taken as a basis for computing the 
population of those rookeries on which only harems could be counted. The appropri- 
ateness of this average was the more apparent as on North rookery of St. George 
the 129 harems accurately counted gave an average of. 17 cows to the harem. 
