EXHIBIT A. 



Part 1. 



Specific details of the fur-seal census of 1913, made by Henry W. 

 Elliott and A. F. Gallagher, special agents of the House Committee 

 on Expenditures in the Department of Commerce, July 10-20, 

 1913, on the Pribilof rookeries of the seal islands of Alaska, 

 giving the facts and figures in detail, with charts of the 17 breed- 

 ing grounds or rookeries on St. Paul and St. George Islands, 

 with a resume of the fur-seal census of 1872-1874, 1890, as to 

 details of their making, in contrast with the work of the Jordan 

 Commission of 1896-1898, and the census work of the Bureau of 

 Fisheries up to date of 1912. 



THE FUH-SEAL CENSUS, 1890 TO DATE, 1913, SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA 



Our survey of the fur-seal herd this season (July 10-20, 1913) 

 has clearly proved the error of the Jordan-Thompson Commission's 

 census of 1896-97. That census hi Dr. Jordan's final report (p. 79 

 et seq., Fur-Seal Investigations, 1896-97, Part I) gave only 376,000 

 seals of all classes to this herd as existing then (season of 1896-97) 

 upon the rookeries and hauling grounds of the Pribilof Islands. 



Upon the basis of that erroneous sum total, all of the statements 

 annually issued by the Bureau of Fisheries since then, up to 1912, 

 have been made. The steady killing by the pelagic sealer and the 

 lessees annually had made no greater inroad upon that "scientific" 

 herd of 376,000 seals of 1897 than to leave by August 1, 1912, the 

 sum total of u 215,000 seals of all classes." (This is Jordan's last 

 census, i. e., 165,352, bleeding seals and young, and some 40,000 

 nonbreeding seals.) 



The manifest error of this census of the Jordan commission for 

 1897 * is at once apparent when a careful review of the killing on land 

 and in the sea is made from 1897 to date of 1912, as above. The 

 manifest truth of the Elliott survey of that herd in 1890 is also fully 

 declared by this House committee's survey of 1913, in which 190,950 

 seals of all classes are found to be in existence on the Pribilof rook- 

 eries and hauling grounds. Elliott, in 1890, summed up the total of 

 the breeding Pribilof seals and young at 959,393, or a " scant mil- 

 lion," as against 3,193,420 such seals in 1874 (p. 57, H. Doc. No. 175, 

 54th Cong., 1st sess), and against some 1,250,000 nonbreeding seals 

 in 1874 he found in 1890 some 80,000 only. (See H. Doc. No. 175, 

 54th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 57, 58.) 



1 The following extract from a report upon the condition of the fur-seal herd in 1909, made by Chief Special 

 Agent Lembkey, shows that he was unable to agree with Dr. Jordan's census work, which latter had pub- 

 lished as the "first accurate count ever made." 



Yet, in spite of this full understanding of its error, as given below by Lembkey, that erroneous census 

 of Jordan was used as the foundation of all succeeding work by Lembkey from 1904 to 1911: 



In 1897 the investigation made by the commission of which Dr. David Starr Jordan was chief disclosed 

 a ratio of bachelors to the whole herd of 1 to 20. That ratio was used by him in his criticisms of the accuracy 

 of H. W. Elliott's censuses based on acreage measurements in 1874 and 1890. Subsequently, as stated in 

 Mr. E. W. Sims's report on the seal islands, in 1906, the relation of bachelors to the whole herd in 1904 

 and 1905, according to the censuses made by the agent in charge of seal fisheries for those years, was found 

 to be, respectively, 1 to 16 and 1 to 14. 



In 1909, by such methods of computation as are available, the whole herd of seals numbered approximately 

 133,000, while the catch of bachelors was 14,331. Added to the latter, to form an idea of the total bachelor 

 yield of the herd, should be 2,000 bachelors marked and released, making a total possible catch of bachelors 

 /or 1909 of 16,331. When we contrast this yield of bachelors for 1909 with the number of the whole herd in 



53490—14 3 33 



