INVESTIGATION OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 729 



The untruth in re pup branding uttered to the committee Friday, 

 February 20, 1914, by George A. Clark (pp. 9-10, notes): 



The Chairman. In your report did you call it whirlwind sealing? 



Mr. Clark. I did. 



The Chairman. In other words you meant that the sealing company had cleaned 

 up everything they could get? 



Mr. Clark. Yes. 



The Chairman. And you made that report? 



Mr. Clark. Yes. 



The Chairman. And you want to say now that it is true? 



Mr. Clark. It is true, and I want to explain what I mean by it. They cleaned up 

 all of the 2-year-old animals. They killed absolutely no yearlings out of the herd 

 because the yearlings do not appear on the hauling grounds in the killing season; that 

 is all. 



The Chairman. Did you say that in your report? 



Mr. Clark. I did not know it. 



The Chairman. Or do you just want to get it in another shape now? 



Mr. Clark. I did not know it at the time. This matter comes to my knowledge aa 

 the result of the branding of 1912. We branded 6,000 pups with a red-hot iron on the 

 head, and we searched for those animals the next year, and if yearlings come to the 

 hauling grounds those animals would have come, and they did not come except two or 

 three animals which we saw. We searched the rookeries for them and did not find 

 them. 



******* 



Mr. Stephens. These were pups that they branded! 



Mr. Elliott. Yes. 



Mr. Stephens. But the yearlings that should have appeared next 

 year did not appear ? 



Mr. Elliott. Every one of those 6,000 pups that he and Mr. 

 Lembkey, and their associates, marked with red-hot irons, with an 

 11 enduring and permanent mark," as they say, had their brains affected. 

 The skull of a fur seal pup is fairly as thin as that writing paper 

 (indicating), and it is translucent. You can hold it up and put a 

 candle in it and it looks like one of those lighted globes above [indi- 

 cating]. I can take my thumb and push it through the skull of a 

 pup i? I want to. Yet, these men say that they held them down, and 

 while they were struggling, they took these hot irons and burned "an 

 enduring mark" right down through the skin. 



Mr. Pattox. Did they say they branded through the skin? Did 

 they not say they branded enough to kill the roots of the hair ? 



Mr. Elliott. But how do you know where you stop ? You can not 

 tell where you stop. 



Mr. Pattox. Their report was they burned enough to kill the roots 

 of the hair. 



Mr. Elliott. Yes; I am coming to that report. I will show the 

 way they branded. When they used the hot irons on their heads and 

 burned down enough to kill the roots of the hair, can you say where 

 they stopped % And what is between that thin skin and that translu- 

 cent bone that covers the cerebellum? Nothing. Even if that hot 

 iron did not get clear through the skin it might and would easily reach 

 some vital spot and affect the brain. You put a hot iron on the skull 

 of a new-born babe of our species, which is four-times as thick as the 

 skull of a seal pup, and I will tell you, Mr. Patton, and there is not a 

 man in this land but what would tell you that that babe is a dead one. 



The Chairmax. Do you mean it would die instantaneously ? 



Mr. Elliott. No; the clots might form slowly, and do, undoubt- 

 edly; because they struggle, some of them may live by reason of 



