Inconsistency of number of httpd processes

$ pwd
/punopo/oracle/product/ias_902/Apache/Apache/logs
$ ../bin/httpd -v
Server version: Oracle HTTP Server Powered by Apache/1.3.19 (Unix)
Server built: Jan 6 2003 10:46:06
$ ps auwx | grep -c [h]ttpd
274
$ fuser error_log
error_log: 14346 14347 14400 14401 14402 14403 14404 14405
14406
....[snipped]
$ fuser error_log | perl -nle '$_=s/ +//g;print' #how many spaces in
output
77
$ ps auwx | grep -c [h]ttpd
234
$ grep MaxClients ../conf/httpd.conf
#MaxClients 150
MaxClients 512

Only approximately 77 of 274 open error_log. Why? In fact, the reason
I post this message is that before last Friday, our MaxClients was set
to 150. And we still saw about 300 httpd processes. That's a more
interesting puzzle. Apache hung and we restarted it with a higher
MaxClients, although that may not be the cause of the hang (grep
MaxClients error_log didn't show anything).

So two questions. Is less than 1/3 of httpd's opening error_log
normal? How do we explain MaxClients was 150 and there were 300
httpd's? Thanks.

Yong Huang