REPLY TO MR. BARRETT-HAMILTON. 183 



Islands was a potent argument in establisliing this truth, which, at this writing, 

 probably no one denies. In one respect, therefore, the whole question of the mortality 

 of the Commander Island pups is no longer of any special importance, since nobody 

 would have the hardihood to assert that the pups starve from this cause on the 

 Pribilofs but survive on the Commanders. Even when Barrett-Hamilton wrote his 

 report, he and all the other "experts" had become convinced of this. It would 

 therefore seem superfluous for Mr. Barrett-Hamilton to devote nearly five folio pages 

 (pp. 38-42) to " the dead-pup question" in the manner he has treated it, for it would 

 not matter whether I in 1895, or Dr. Jordan and Professor Thompson in 1896, had 

 all been mistaken in the dead pups we saw. If we had records of none, but only knew 

 that a certain number of females had been killed by the pelagic sealers on the feeding 

 grounds, we would now know that an equal number of pups had died on the 

 Commander Island rookeries, and all we could do would be to seek for the causes of 

 our not finding the requisite number of carcasses on the beaches.' 



These causes, in all likelihood, would be found to be the same which I have already 

 advanced in explanation of the fact that we have only been able to account for a 

 minor fraction of these carcasses, viz, the nature of the beaches, the numerous 

 presence of foxes, gulls, ravens, insects, etc. Barrett- Hamilton knowing these things 

 when he wrote, in 1897, might have let the matter rest there. Yet he must needs 

 dissent from my suggestion that the mortality of starving pups on Bering Island in 

 1895 was " abnormal." As he supports thiS dissension by arguments based wholly 

 upon erroneous reading of my report, and as his result, consequently, also is erroneous, 

 I may be permitted to make some remarks. 



With regard to the dead pups seen by me in 1895, Mr. Barrett-Hamilton starts 

 out from the supposition that the figures I submitted refer to the whole North 

 Eobkery. On page 40 he says: "I do not propose to question Dr. Stejneger's figures 

 for the North Rookery, but they should be about halved before they will stand as 

 correct for the losses due to starvation, whether that starvation was due to pelagic 

 sealing or to other causes, so that we may say that about 1,000 pups met their death 

 from starvation, due to all causes combined, on the rookery in 1895." And again, on 

 the same page, he says that "he (Stejnegerj gives the following estimate of the 

 number of dead pups on the rookery." As a matter of fact, I did not pretend to give 

 any estimate for the entire rookery. The pups counted and estimated were those 

 lying in the windrows on both sides of the sands and on the high ground. I made 

 no attempt at estimating the number of the many carcasses scattered over the rest of 

 the rookery, nor did I make any allowance for the numerous bodies which must have 

 been destroyed by the foxes, etc., as I would have done had I attempted to make an 

 estimate of the total number of dead pups on North Rookery in 1895. 



It may also be pertinent to ask why Barrett-Hamilton asserts with such positiveness 

 that my figures " should be about halved before they will stand as correct for the losses 



' Barrett- Hamilton acknowledges almost as mucli, for he says (p. 41) : " I think that there can he no 

 doubt whatever that the phenomena of dead and dying pups as seen at the Pribilof Islands late in the 

 season is also to he found on the Commander Islands, though to what extent I can not say." To this 

 it may he remarked, first, that if the Canadian authorities would make public the sealing logs the 

 extevt of the mortality could he ascertained to a nicety; and, second, that the starving season on the 

 Commander Islands begins much earlier than on the Pribilofs, there being no time limit restricting 

 the beginning of pelagic sealing to August 1. 



