56) CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 
Rogers and the Corwin has defined it. Further work will undoubtedly add other species to the 
list and widen the range of others. 
3ut it is thought the present paper will give a very good idea of the bird life of the regions 
visited. Having the continent of America on the one side and Asia on the other, it might be 
anticipated that we should secure specially rich results from the combinations of two faunas; yet, 
although this is true to a certain extent, there are predominating reasons to prevent the very marked 
exhibition of this. The first is the location of the region within the limits inhabited by a cireum- 
polar fauna, and in consequence frequented by many species of wide distribution. The next is the 
similarity of the two barren coast lines and outlying islands, offering but small inducements to land 
birds, while the sea birds, as usual, are species common to extended areas. 
The usually low but rolling coast country, a monotonous grass.grown plain, varied by lichen or 
moss-covered slopes, or wind-swept hills reaching back far into the interior, are the only variations 
to the general level. Here and there a few weathered pieces of driftwood break the cold gray of the 
shingly beach, while clusters of native huts or tents lend a passing interest to the cheerless coast, 
thus offering but slight inducements for birds. 
As might well be expected, the former region north of Bering Straits is entirely Arctic ; and 
south of Bering Straits in Bering Sea the water birds may be divided into two groups—those fre- 
quenting the deep water surrounding the Aleutian, Fur Seal, and Bering Strait Islands, and the 
adjoining Siberian coast for the first group; and the shallow-water species occurring along the Alas- 
kan shore from the mouth of the Kuskoquin River to the vicinity of Bering Straits. The former 
group includes the auks and allied species; also the Rogers Fulmar and Steller’s eider; and the 
second group such species as the emperor goose, the spectacled eider, and many of the fresh and 
brackish water ducks. 
This distinction of the two shores holds also, to a certain extent, north of Bering Straits, 
these two shores having there somewhat the same relationship I have just mentioned. There is 
also a difference still more striking to be noted between the species frequenting the sea north of 
Bering Straits and those to the south. North of the straits the auks are very rare, while south 
throughout the Aleutian Islands, over all the other islands of Bering Sea, except along its eastern 
border, including even the islands in Bering Straits, they swarm in the greatest abundance ; while 
the presence in Bering Sea of several other species, including gulls and petrels not found north 
of the straits, makes the difference still more striking. Beyond these differences, however, it is 
difficult to divide the region into any well-marked faunal districts. 
Though along some parts of the coast the breeding water fowl fill the marshes with life, yet 
the rocky islands of Bering Sea are the places about which birds exist in the greatest numbers ; 
and as Baron Nordenskiéld well remarks in his account of the Vega’s voyage, “It is not the larger 
inhabitants of the Polar regions, such as the whale, walrus, bear, and seal, which first attract the ex- 
plorer’s attention, but the innumerable floeks of birds that swarm around the polar traveller during 
the long summer day of the North. And this is espeeially striking about any of the islands which 
birds—the gulls, guillemots, and auks—seek as breeding-places. The islands of Bering Straits 
resemble enormous bee-hives, about which the birds swarm in countless numbers, filling the air with 
their swiftly moving forms in every direction, and the waters are covered with them all about the 
islands, while every jutting point and place where foothold can be obtained is taken possession 
of by them for breeding- places. 
Although Herald Island is almost perpetually surrounded by the ice-pack, yet we found it 
swarming with murres, guillemots, and gulls; as were also some of the cliffs on Wrangel Island. 
Still to the westward, on some of the islands visited by the Jeannette crew on their retreat towards 
the Siberian coast, this was also found to be the case, as Mr. Newcomb informs me and they found 
there guillemots in extreme abundance, although the islands were surrounded by an almost un- 
broken ice-pack. 
Por the benefit of naturalists visiting this region in future, I will mention a few localities where 
certain species of considerable interest may be obtained. The Emperor Goose is quite abundant 
on the southwestern portion of Saint Lawrence Island, frequenting the low, flat portion of the island 
intersected by lagoons. The islands of Bering Strait are all of them resorted to by the Crested 
Parrot-billed and Least Auks, and the Diomede Islands in particular are frequented by myriads 
