INVESTIGATION OF THE EITK-SEAL IKTDUSTKY OP ALASKA. 615 



come from an animal about 39 inches long, which was a yearling; 

 if the salted skin was 40 or 41 inches long, it must have come from an 

 animal about 45 inches long, which was a 2-year-old, and so on. 



In order to arrive at this conclusion, Mr. Elliott had to assume, and 

 ask the committee to accept the assumption as a fact, that the skin, 

 when taken off the animal, was exactly the same size as it was when 

 on the animal, and that no change in the dimensions of the skin had 

 occurred through the operations of skinning and of salting. As 

 stated before, no actual experiments previously nave ever been made 

 by Mr. Elliott or by the department or any one, so far as I know, to 

 determine whether a sealskin after being taken off the animal pre- 

 served the same dimensions as when on the animal, or whether the 

 operation of removing or of salting the skin created any change in its 

 dimensions when it was still on the animal. 



In the previous hearings, therefore, because of this lack of evi- 

 dence, this question, which is one of fact solely, was treated only by 

 means of argument and hypothetical deductions, which necessarily 

 left the matter unsettled. 



To make accurate and definite experiments in this matter, as a 

 means of determining whether the dimensions of a sealskin before 

 and after its removal from the body were or were not the same, was 

 one of the odjects of the Bureau of Fisheries during the summer of 

 1912, after this question had been discussed considerably before this 

 committee. 



In those experiments Messrs. Marsh and Clark and myself, with 

 the whole native and white population of St. Paul, participated, and 

 each step in the experiments was slowly and carefully made, so there 

 would be no error and no question as to the accuracy of the result. 

 In making them, over 200 animals were clubbed, then carefully 

 weighed and measured and numbered. Afterwards the animals were 

 skinned, and the green skin given the same number as the body. The 

 green skin was then measured as carefully as it was possible to 

 measure a green skin. The amount of fur remaining on the carcass 

 was then measured. The skin was then salted, and after it had been 

 in salt for some days, was taken out of salt and measured again. 



The result of these experiments was to show that the size of the 

 skin changed greatly after it had been taken off the carcass and 

 changed again after it had been in salt for sometime. The whole 

 experiment demonstrated that it would be impracticable, so far as 

 my judgment would go, to make any accurate test of the age of a 

 seal by a measurement of the salted skin of that seal, because this 

 experiment showed that the size of the salted skin depended entirely 

 on how much it was stretched, or whether it was stretched at all at the 

 time of salting. 



It was found by these experiments that the skin on the body is in 

 a state of tension, varying with the condition whether the animal is 

 fat or lean. If the animal is fat, the tension is greater; if lean, the 

 tension is less; at least, that would be my judgment. When the skin 

 is removed from the body, the tension persists for a time and acts 

 upon the skin, which immediately retracts or curls up as a result. 

 The skin is so elastic and pliable that with scarcely any pressure it 

 can be stretched to much more than its normal size. If not stretched 

 at all when salted, the skin is much less than its normal size. It can 

 not be measured in its green state, because in its green state it can 



