underlying parts of the body. As he swung each seal to the table, the 
carrier shouted male or female and the "tallyman" repeated the word, 
The "brander" placed the iron on the back of the seal's neck, or 
slightly on the near side. He held the iron in place for five or six seconds, 
pushing it back and forth to clear away the burned fur. The resulting brand 
was a clean, light-brown area of skin about 0,75 to 1 inch wide and_2 inches 
long, crosswise of the body (fig. 2). The seal pups showed no marked sign of 
discomfort during or after the branding process. The brander then passed the 
iron to a "forge operator" who brushed off the accumulation of charred fur, 
Another operator took a fresh hot iron from the forge and passed it to the 
brander. The carrier removed the branded pup and took it 25-50 paces away, 
toward the ocean or toward a rock pile, The stubborn tendency of the pups to 
return to the scene of activities and to crowd areund the feet of the workmen 
was a source of annoyance and delay. 
At the season when the branding was done, September 17-28, most of the 
pups were two or three months old, weighed an estimated 20-30 pounds, and 
were well coated with the silvery hair of autumn. Some were still shedding 
the rusty black hair of summer. A few, apparently orphans, were so small 
that they were spared from the branding. No seals were killed in the branding 
process itself, although 36 were smothered in drives--a mortality of 0.72 
percent, 
(6) In 1941 on St, Paul Island, Ford Wilke and A. Henry Banner branded, 
as well as tagged, 10,000 seal pups. They worked between the dates of 
September 23 and October 8, considerably later than the best time, Their 
methods and instruments were, in the main, the same as those used in 1940. 
We shall discuss the 1941 operations more fully under tagging, pe. 9, 

Figure 2,--fur seal branded as a pup in September 1940; killed June 28, 1944. 
Male, weight 90 pounds, specimen BDM 69, St. Paul Island, Alaska. 
4 
