740 INVESTIGATION OF THE FTJK-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



The Jordan-Clark census, 1897, 1909, 1912, the self-confessed 

 errors of it : 



1897: 129,216 cows. (See p. 15, Treas. Doc. 1994.) 

 1909: 50,626 cows. (See p. 895, Science, Dec. 27, 1912.) 

 1911: 39,400 cows. (See p. 367, hearing No. 9; Lembkey.) 

 1912: 81,984 cows._ (See p. 896, Science, Dec. 27, 1912.) 

 The kiUing on the islands up to August 1, 1911, took 12,002 seals, 

 and the pelagic sealing fleet, busy up to December 15, 1911, took 

 13,500 seals, or 25,000 seals from the total officially reported August 1, 

 1911. 



How did these cow seals actually increase with that land killing 

 up to August 1, 1911, of 12,002 seals, and the catch of the pelagic 

 fleet up to December 15, 1911, of 13,000 chiefly taken from 39,400 

 cow seals August 1, 1911, so by August, 1912, they had actually 

 doubled in less than 7 months after December 15, 1911? 



Is it not true that the 1897 and the 1909 census was way helow the 

 real number of cows that then were in existence f 



Does not that prove, when I went up there last year and found 80,000 

 cows, that these censuses preceding that time were absurd, just as I 

 had charged the Bureau of Fisheries with making a fictitious census 

 April 24, 1912 (pp. 605-606, hearing Xo. 10) ? And this proved it. 



If it were accurate, then how could those 50,626 cows actually 

 increase, year by year, up to 81,984, with the uninterrupted killing 

 by a fleet of 30 sealing schooners busy on them from August 1, 1909, 

 to December 15, 1911? 



Further comment is unnecessary. Xow, I want to say a word about 

 the physical difficulty of pup counting. I am going to give you facts 

 from my own personal observations. In 1872, while watching the 

 "podding of the pups," between the 1st and 10th of August, back of 

 the sand dunes of Tolstoi Sands, St. Paul Island, I saw them 

 gathering into groups, or "pods" there, of tens of thousands. It 

 became interesting and a subject of inquiry for me to find out about 

 how many were in certain "pods," that looked to contain anywhere 

 from 5,000 to 10,000. It was a subject that aroused a great deal of 

 interest and speculation, because the white men who were helping 

 me there, on the islands, in getting up this table of my fur-seal 

 weights and measurements then, insisted that we could not drive 

 those pups so as to count them as we did the yearlings and killable 

 seals from the hauling grounds up to the killing grounds. Then I 

 insisted on having a trial made of it. They all laughed, but good- 

 naturedly went at it with me. We had 12 or 13 natives, and Dr. 

 Kapus, Mr. Church, and Mr. Webster stood by. We started on a 

 "pod" that we estimated contained perhaps five or six thousand 

 pups, although some of the men said there were ten thousand black 

 pups. We worked over that pod for hours and never got them to 

 run like sheep through a gate. We would have to walk back from 

 them until we were, well, as far as that curb over there in the street, 

 before they would move out of the mass. Then they would start to 

 run, 2, 3, 4, 50, or 60 in a bunch, and then if we moved up they would 

 go right back again to the mass. There was no driving them. If you 

 aid you would smother them; they would crowd upon one another, 

 climb upon one another, and the lower ones would be smothered. 

 Then I saw there was no use of attempting to drive any great mass 

 of pups. It was perfectly evident that to count them in that way 



