INVESTIGATION OF THE FUK-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 495 



Mr. McGuiee. Those were the pups born in 1913 ? 



Mr. Clark. In 1913, yes. 



Mr. McGuiee. And they had never been to sea? 



Mr. Glare. They had never been to sea. The fur-seal pup is, 

 of course, timid of the water for the first six weeks of its life and does 

 not go into the water. We counted them before they could swim 

 and therefore they did not get away from us into the water. 



Mr. McGuiee. How many of those pups did you count in 1913? 



Mr. Clark. We counted 92,269 of them. May I pass these photo- 

 graphs around ? 



Mr. McGuiee. We have seen those photographs, have we not? 



Mr. Claek. Not these. As you are speaking of pup counting, 

 I wish to pass some along. They are three photographs designed to 

 show the process of pup counting. 



Mr. McGuiee. Has there been any contention as to whether you 

 can get an accurate count of the pups, that you know of ? 



Mr. Claek. I think so. In this hearing tefore the committee Mr. 

 Elliott takes occasion to doubt the success of the count at page 26. 



Mr. Elliott. I quote the official records of your own assistants 

 £ ho doubted it. 



Mr. McGuiee. Now explain fully just how you counted the pups, 

 and whether you can make an accu ate count of pups, and any state- 

 ment you niay desire to make with respect to any contention there 

 may have been either with Mr. Elliott or with anybody else. 



Mr. Elliott. None by me, Mr. McGuire. 



Mr. McGuiee. I say with you or anybody else. 



Mr. Claek. The fur seals lie along about 8 miles of shore of the two 

 islands. They are broken up into sections, about 14 breeding areas 

 that we designate hj special names. They have names like Zapadni, 

 Polovina, Northeast Point, Reef and North Rookery, and so on. 

 These are separate and distinct, sometimes separated by miles of 

 coast line, so there is no interchange of the animals. The method of 

 procedure was to go upon one of these rookeries with a guard of na- 

 tives who would drive off the adult animals, leaving only the pups for 

 us to handle ; one of us would go between the animals and the sea and 

 another on the land side. When we got the pups to running back 

 from main body, in a narrow band, we closed in on them, taking 25 or 

 50 or 100 of the pups. We would make that band of pups run down the 

 beach a couple of hundred feet, and as the pups were older some than 

 others they had different capacities of strength and speed. They 

 lined out according to their strength, and when they were in that 

 lined out condition we counted them 2 by 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc., as 

 they passed some convenient rock. If they got to running too fast, 

 we would step in and cut them off until we got the count straight and 

 then start them up again. 



Mr. McGuiee. Just as you would count cattle running through a 

 narrow passage ? 



Mr. Claek. Yes, sir; or just as you would count sheep. 



Mr. McGuiee. Could you count them as accurately as you could 

 cattle or sheep ? 



Mr. Claek. Just as accurately. I want to call attention to my 

 reports for 1912 and 1913, where I have given this in great detail. 

 Here is the counting of one rookery, and the pods of pups ran 58, 44, 

 14, 30, 32, 10, 9, 13, and so on down through the list. The point is 



