Nov. Id, ISSl.j 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



S47 



courses, On tbeii- being disturbed they run swiftly behind 

 some thick clump of bushes and take their flight from 

 these, giving the sxjortsman a chance to exercise his best 

 skill in shooting. Contrary to their usual habit I saw 

 one standing in an open place perfectly still, and about 

 ten steps from me. Its tail was spread, standing straight 

 up, making a semi-circle. Its ruff was brought close up 

 to its eyes. It was looking at me intently. I tliought it, 

 in that attitude, the most beautiful bird T ever saw. No 

 turkey cock could be prouder. I looked at hi m in wonder 

 until, without any warning, he started in flight. But it 

 was too late. My gun had been ready and a moment 

 latpr he lay fluttering on the ground. 



The rufled grouse, from that place, at least, were un- 

 usually fat, and I noticed their crops were filled with 

 what 'appeared to be a light green colored berry, I saw 

 the same at the bottom of the creek and floating on the 

 water, and further search showed some fastened to the 

 leaves not yet fallen from the willows. The apparent 

 berry, as I cut through several, had a firm, rich pulp, and 

 in the center a well-formed grub, then about ready to eat 

 its way out. Some insect stings the main rib of the wil- 

 low leaf in May and lays its egg. The juices from the 

 leaf form this' berry-like appeai-ance, and thus food is 

 furnished the ruffed grouse in place of the beech nuts 

 and berries of other latitudes. 



About this time blue grouse collect in great flocks and 

 go to some place where the pine trees are plenty and make 

 that their winter home, living mainly on pine buds. 

 When fairly settled in a thick grove, they are very reluct- 

 ant to leave, and a sportsman may shoot all day on a few 

 acres without driving the flock away. No one here hunts 

 for market, and but few grouse are killed in winter quar- 

 ters, but a large share of them die in. winter from cold 

 and hunger. 



The quail, which are now very plenty in the valley, 

 have this year raised an unusual number of second 

 broods. The younger are almost too small to shoot, but 

 they go with older broods and share their fate before the 

 sportsman. Some peculiarity of the season may account 

 for it. I notice some fruit trees in town, after maturing 

 one large crop, blossomed again. Geo. H. Wyman. 



Boise City, Nov. 5. 



THE FATE OF THE FUR SEAL. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



In your issue of the 5th inst. appears a characteristic 

 letter from Wm. H. Dall, who, among other things touch- 

 ing upon the status of the fur seal rookeries of the 

 Pribylov Islands, declares that my estimates of the num- 

 bers of the fur seals on the Pribylov rookeries in 1872-'74 

 is "a gross exaggeration:" that my figui-e of two square 

 feet for each seal thereon is too small; that the physical 

 conditions make it so, etc. 



In the first, let me say that he w^ho writes for the in- 

 formation of his fellow men that which will not stand 

 the test of unlimited criticism is a failure; and he is 

 equally a failure if he keeps quiet and allows dogmatic 

 and superficial denials of his work to be made and not 

 answered. 



"What Mr. Dall now asserts was said to me in 1881 by 

 an associate of mine in the Smithsonian Institution, who 

 is a far abler and better known zoologist than Mr. Dall; 

 lie was promptly challenged by me at the time to bring 

 the question before the Biological Society of Washington, 

 and when he declined, I made the matter entirely clear to 

 him, and he was satisfied. 



The following statements of fact as to this matter of 

 the numbers of the breeding seals, as introductory, are 

 pertinent: 



First— No fur seals except the females (nubiles, primi- 

 pares and multipares) and their young, and the full-grown 

 males, are found upon the breeding grounds during the 

 rutting season; emphatically none at the height of this 

 season in July every year. 



Second — The proportion of females to males in 1872- 

 '14. was an averat^e of fifteen bearing females and their 

 fifteen young, newly born; and of nubiles, or virgin fe- 

 males (or those coming into heat for th^ first time), an 

 indefinite number, because they leave no evidence of 

 their being on the ground by pupping, I believe that 

 four or five of these young females to each male in 1872- 

 '74 was a fair average. 



If the reader will bear these two leading statements 

 steadily in mind, as he follows my explanation below, 

 he will not get my argument mixed" up with the size and 

 weight of the bachelor seals, or non-breeding males that 

 never came upon these rookeries in 1872 -'74, during the 

 breeding season aforesaid. 



Now for the physical fur seal data: 



A nubile female average length 45in.*; weight 53 to fiOlbs. 



All old female average length 48 n.; weight 75 to lOOlbs. 



Anewly-born (2wks.old)average length ]4in.; weight 10 to lllbs. 

 Full-grown bull or male, average length 75in.; weight 800 to 400lbs. 



These figures are from a large series of measurements 

 which I made on the killing grounds of the Pribylov 

 Islands in 1872-74, inclusive, and they cannot be im- 

 peached. 



Therefore your readers will observe that a female seal 

 is not quite 4ft, in length, her greatest diameter is at her 

 shoulders (w^here her girth is from 28 to 32in,), from 10 to 

 12in., the body then tapering rapidly from thence to both 

 ends, anterior and posterior. 



That a puppy seal, from one to three weeks old (and 

 when m,y estimates were made), is a scant foot in length, 

 with its greater body diameter not more than 5in, — really 

 not more than a full 4m. in most cases. 



That a full-grown bull fur seal is between 6 and 7ft. in 

 length; with an average of 6ift. for the entire rookery; 

 that its greatest body diameter, through its shoulders and 

 under its "wig," is an average of 2^ft.; tapering rapidly 

 from here to the tip of nose and root of tail. 



These statements of fact being uuderstood, now I ask 

 the reader to note the following; 



No fur seal, young or old, when resting on the breeding 

 grounds, stretches itself out at full length on the rocks or 

 earth unless injured in the lumbar regions, or deathly 

 sick, and the number you can see in this condition you 

 can comit on your fingers at the end of every day's close 

 observation of hundreds of thousands. 



The female fur seals and their young take three typical 

 positions when hauled out on the breeding grounds, as 

 shown in Figs. 1, 2 and 3; while the pups add a fourth 

 position assumed by curling themselves up so as to form 



* From tip of nose to root of tail; tail very short, never more 

 than 3 to 4in. in length. 



a round ball as in Fig. 4; and the adult males take rela- 

 tively the same positions of the females above indicated, 

 but owing to the great fatigue that ensues from fighting 

 among themselves and serving the females, they sprawl 

 out at intervals in almost every conceivable form except 

 that of stretching themselves out at full length. All fur 

 seals when at rest invariably throw their hindquarters up 

 under their loins, just as a dog or cat does; in the case of 

 the hair seals it is the reverse. 



Now, understanding these points, the reader will please 

 take a survey of the following diagrams, which show a 

 female seal outlined as she rests on 4 sq, ft. of ground, 

 ard her pup as it lies by her. 



The following diagram shows the superficial area 



breeding; that they never crowded here or thinned out 

 there : that the ground was densely occupied andunif ormly, 

 no matter whether only a belt under the cliffs or where 

 the rookery ground extended for hundreds of feet away 

 back from the sea margin. 



The dense massing of these seals on the rookery 

 ground was made then evident to the most careless ob- 

 server when his attention was fixed on the subject; it was 

 made by the appearance of the pups themselves, which 

 between the 10th and 20th of July, every year, lay in so 

 solidly together that the ground itself seemed fairly 

 covered by them alone, since not more than one-third of 

 the mothers are on shore among the pups at any one 

 time. 



Dorsal profile of adnlt male fur seal, occupying esij. ft. of ground. 



Dorsal profile of female fur seal and young (three weeks ol<l), as they rest on 45q. ft. of ground (or an average of 

 2sq. ft. for each when applied to the whole field). 



covered by a "bulF' as it rests so as to cover the greatest 

 space in any one posture that it naturally assumes. 



Now, is it not entirely plain that the females as they 

 rest on the breeding grounds require but 3 sq. ft. of sur- 

 face; that their pups require a trifle less than 1 sq. ft. 

 each, and that the bulls or adult males occupy little more 

 than 8 or 10 sq. ft.? But, right at this point you may 



OKIGINAL FIELD DIAGRAM. 



Diagram of a section of exactly 100 sq. ft. of breerlin^ ground, showing 

 the relative area and numbers of fur seals thereon as tliey ajjpear massed 

 uuif ornily all over the entire breeding ari a of the Pribylov Islands, between 

 July 10 and 20, at the height of the breeding season. There are shown 18 

 breeding females (primlpares, C, multipares, D), 4 virgin females (nubiles, 

 Bi, 24 newly-born pup^ (E), and one old bull, or "sea catch" (A); a total of 47 

 seals big and little on this area. 



reasonably ask, "while it is clear that 4sq. ft. of area will 

 embrace a female fur seal and her offspring, yet why do 

 you ignore that larger space which you admit the bull 



occupies?" 



For this reason : I have not been able to fix upon the 

 number of virgin females which have been upon this 

 breeding ground during the rutting season, for the reason 

 that these females naturally leave no mark behind them 

 of their being here, as the other classes of females do, and 

 they do not remain themselves long on the field after 

 being served, but it was reasonable to give each bull an 

 average of at least four of these nubiles at the lowest cal- 

 culation, this would cover the ground which he occupies, 

 and reduces the whole basis of calculation to the simplest 

 form, viz., 3 sq. ft. for each animal, big and little, S , $ 

 and o, that existed on those brpeding grounds as these 

 animals hauled out and bred in 1872-'74, 



Everybody admitted in l872-'74 who was on the islands 

 and especially charged with observing the seals, that I 

 was right in then saying that the seals obeyed a natural 

 law of distribution over a given area of ground when 



In conclusion I desire to commend to the dogmatic Mr. 

 Dall the following; opinions of Lt. Washburn Maynard, 

 U. S. N,, who in 1874 gave the entire breeding season of 

 these animals his careful studious attention; this, Mr. 

 Dall never has done, and the "gross exaggeration" of my 

 work he finally arises to a consciousness of , after sleeping 

 over the publication of it, full sixteen years — in the mean- 

 time, never seeing anything of the life itself that was, or 

 is worthy of itemizing! Lt, Maynard says in his report to 

 the Secretarv of the Navy, made in 1875 (43i Congress, 

 1st Sess. Ex. Doc. No. 43): 



Importance of Knowing the Number of Seals.— It is of very 

 great significance in this connection to know how many seals 

 come annually (o the islands, or rather to understand how many 

 may be killed for their skiris annually, without causing less to' 

 come hereafter than do at the present time. To determine how 

 many there are with accuracy is a task almost on a par with that 

 of numbering the stars. The singular motion of the animals when 

 on shore, the great variety in size, color and position, the extent 

 of surface over which they are spread, and the fact that it can- 

 not be determined exactly what proportion of them, of their sev- 

 eral classes, are on shore at any given time; all these desiderata 

 for comprehension make it simply Impossible to get more than an 

 approximation of their numbers. They have been variously esti- 

 mated at from one to fifteen millions. 



Methods op Enumeration of the Fur Seal.— I think the 

 most accurate enumeration yet made is that bv Mr. H. W. Elliott 

 special agent of the Treasury Department, in 1873. This calcula- 

 tion is based upon the hypothesis that the breeding seals are gov- 

 erned in hauling by a common and invariable law of distribution, 

 which is, that the area of the rookery ground ;is directly propor- 

 tional to the numher of seals occupyiEg it. He estiniates that 

 there is one seal to every two square feet of rookery surface. 

 Hence the problem is reduced to ihe simple operation of obtaining 

 half the sum of the superficial area of all the rookeries In squa.ra 

 feet. He surveyed these breeding grounds of both islands in 1873 

 and 1873, when at their greatest limit of expansion, and ohtained 

 the following results: Qnon St. Paul Island there were 6,0t)0.000ft. 

 of ground occupied by 3,030,000 breed mg seals and their young. 

 On St. Gt-orge Island he announced 326,S40sq. ft. of superficial rook- 

 ery area occupied bv 163 420 breeding seals and their young; a total 

 for both islands of 3,193,420 breading seals and their voung. The 

 number of non-breeding jseals cannot be determined"in the fore- 

 going manner, as they haul most irregularly, but it stems to me 

 probable that they are nearly as numerous as the other diss is. 

 If so, it would give not far from 6,000,000 as the stated number of 

 seals of all kinds which visited the Pribylov Islands during the 

 season of 1872. 



General accuracy of these Results.— It is likely that these 

 figures are not far from the truth, btic I do not think it necessary 

 myself to take into consideration the actual number of seals in 

 order to decide the question of how many can he taken each year 

 without injury to the fishery. The law that the size of the rook- 

 eries varies directly as the number of seals increases or dimin- 

 ishes seems to me, after close and repeated observation, to be cor- 

 rect. All the rookeries, whether large or small, are uniform in 

 appearance, alike compact, without waste of space and never 

 crowded. Such being the case, it is unimportant to know the 

 actual numoer of seals upon the rookeries. For any change in 

 the number of seals, which is the point at issue, increases or de- 

 creases in size, and the rookeries, taken collectively, will show a 

 corresponding increase or decrease in the number of breeding 

 seals; consequently changes in the aggregate of pups born 

 annually, upon which the extent and safety of the fisheries 

 depends, can be observed accurately from year to year by follow- 

 ing these lines of survey. 



Surveyed Plats of the Rookeries.— If, then, a plan or map 

 of each rookery be made every year, showing accurately its size 

 and form, when at its greatest expansion, which is between the 

 lOtb and 25rh of July annuallv, a comparison of this map will 

 give the relative numb.^r of the breeding seals as they increase or 

 diminish from year to year. I submit with this report maps of 

 St. Paul and St. George islands, showing the extended location of 

 breeding rookeries and hauling gmunds upon tDem. Tnese maps 

 are from surveys made in July, 1874, by Mr. Elliott and myself, 

 and a map of each rooifery on both islands drawn from careful 

 surveys made by Mr. Elliott in 1872, show them now as they were 

 in the season of 1871 as compared witn that of 1872. I respectfully 

 recommend that enlarged copies of these latter maps be furnished 

 to the government agents in charge of the islands, and that they 

 be required to compare them each year with the respective rook- 



