50 INVESTIGATION OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



Dr. Jordan at this late hour attempts to impeach their integrity I propose to impale 

 his sophisms, assumptions, and misstatements on a few pointed facts. 



Dr. Jordan says (p. 77): "The next attempt at enumeration was made in 1872-1874 

 by Henry W. Elliott, special agent sent by the United States Treasury Department to 

 investigate the condition of the herd. He followed the same general method inaugu- 

 rated by Capt. Bryant, finding the shore extent and width of the rookeries and 

 allotting a certain space to each individual animal. He, however, worked out the 

 plans in much greater detail." This is a deliberate misstatement of fact. Capt. 

 Bryant made an estimate in 1870 of the area and extent of the breeding grounds of 

 the Pribilof Islands, when, at the time, he had never laid his eyes on a single rook- 

 ery on St. George Island and had seen but three of the seven breeding grounds on 

 St. Paul, and these he saw through a telescope from the deck of a steamer. He then 

 made the assertion that "there are at least 12 miles of shore line on the island of 

 St. Paul, occupied by the seals as breeding grounds, with the average width of 15 

 rods. There being about 20 seals to the square rod, gives 1,152,000 as the whole num- 

 ber of breeding males and females. Deducting one-tenth for males leaves 1,037,800 

 breeding females." He then proceeded to estimate the St. George seals at "about 

 one-half the number of St. Paul." 



By the very nature of things this estimate was a mere guess. The author of it never 

 saw one-hundredth part of the area he figured on, and he did not know enough of 

 the animals, and, for that matter, never knew enough to understand that placing 

 20 of them on a square rod of superficial area was a ludicrous expansion of their real 

 method of hauling on the breeding grounds. It was the frank and good-natured 

 personal admission cf the old man, Bryant, to me, when I went up with him on the 

 same steamer to the islands in April, 1872, that he did not know anything definite 

 about the subject; that he was merely guessing, as any old whaler might calculate 

 "dead reckoning" in a fog, that caused me to set so promptly to work when I arrived, 

 on a preliminary topographical survey of the area and position of each breeding ground 

 on the islands, as well as making surveys of the entire shore lines of both. But I 

 had no idea as I began the work and completed it, in so far as the landed area went, 

 of making a census of the seals upon the line of Capt. Bryant's speculation, because 

 1 early saw that there were so many variations in the sizes of the seals, the irregular 

 massing and unmassing of the harems, that the plan of locating just so many adult 

 seals to a given area was impracticable. 



But as I hung over these rookeries day after day I became impressed with the fact 

 that no matter whether the mother seals were present on the ground or absent on 

 their food excursions their pups, or young ones, never left the immediate area of 

 their birthplace on the rookery up to a time in the season not later than the 10th 

 or 20th of each July; that if I counted them in a given area during that period I 

 should then know just how many cows belonged to it, and only by taking the pups as 

 my guide could I get at the real number of females. The males were steadfastly on 

 the ground all the time, and then a general estimate for the number of virgin females 

 could be made upon the ratio of this pup count, as it was a basis of the birth rate 

 of the entire herd. 



YVliile this subject grew upon me, I called the attention of my associates on the 

 island (St. Paul, 1872-73) to it. One of these gentlemen, Mr. William Kapus, was 

 an unusually well-educated man (the company's general manager) and a man of 

 affairs as well. He took deep interest in the solution of this seal-space problem as 

 I presented it to him in the following form; also Dr. Kramer, the surgeon, another 

 cultivated, scholarly man, aided me in the inquiry: 



1. The seals haul out on these breeding grounds with great evenness of massing — 

 never crowded unduly here, or scattered there — so evenly that if suddenly every 

 mother were to appear at the height of the season there would be just room enough 

 for all, without suffocating or inconveniencing their lives on the ro^ks. 



2. That in estimating the number of seals in the breeding grounds we must make 

 the number of pups present at the height of the season the unit of calculation, because 

 their mothers are never all present at any one time, not half, and at many times not 

 one-third of them are; that the height of the breeding season is between July 10 and 

 20 annually. 



Upon these two fundamental propositions I stirred up a vigorous discussion and 

 examination as to their truth or untruth among the white men then on the island-. 

 of South Island especially, late in 1872, and until the close of the season of 1873 the 

 settlement of this question was left open. Then each and every white man on the 

 islands at that time (there were nine of them) subscribed heartily to the truth of these, 

 my assumptions, as a true working hypothesis. 



Now. what does Jordan say about this particular law of even distribution on the 

 rookeries which I formulated in 1872? Before I quote him I want to say that Jordan, 



