16 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



shelter in the grass. Several species of beetles are also numerous here. 

 One of them, the famous green and gold carabus, is exceedingly com- 

 mon, crawling everywhere, and is just as bright in the rich bronzing 

 of its Aving shields as are its famous prototypes of Brazil. One or two 

 species of Ichneumon., a Cymindis, several representatives of the 

 A'phidiphaga, one or two of DyUscidce, three or four CicindelidcB — 

 these are nearly all that I found. A single dragon fly, Peria hicaudata, 

 flitted over the lakes and ponds of St. Paul. The, to our eyes, famil- 

 iar form of the bumblebee, Bombus horealis, passing from flower to 

 flower, was rarely seen; but a few are here resident. The Hydro- 

 corisce occur in great abundance, skipping over the water in the lakes 

 and pools everywhere, and a very few species of butterflies, princi- 

 pally the yellow NymphalidGb, are represented by numerous individ- 

 uals. 



Land mammals. — Aside from the sea life on the Pribilof islands, 

 there is no indigenous mammalian creature with the exception of the 

 blue and white foxes, Vidpes Jagopus, and the lemming, Myodes oben- 

 sis. The latter is restricted, for some reason or other, to the island of 

 St. George, where it is, or at least was, in 1874, very abundant. Its 

 burrows and paths, under and among the grassy hummocks and mossy 

 flats, checkered every square rod of land there covered with this vege- 

 tation. Although the island of St. Paul is but 29 or 30 miles to the 

 northwest, not a single one of these active, curious little animals is 

 found on it, nor could I learn from the natives that it had ever been 

 seen there. The foxes are also restricted to these islands; that is, 

 their kind, which are not found elsewhere, except the stray examples 

 on St. Matthew seen by myself, and tliose which are carefully domesti- 

 cated and preserved at Attoo, the extreme westernmost land of the 

 Aleutian chain. These animals find comfortable holes for their accom- 

 modation and retreat on the seal islands among the countless chinks 

 and crevices of the basaltic formation. They feed and grow fat uiDon 

 sick and weakly seals, also devouring many of the pups, and thej^ vary 

 this diet by water fowl and eggs^ during the summer, returning for 

 their subsistence during the long winter to the bodies of seals upon 

 the breeding grounds and the skinned carcasses left upon the killing 

 fields. Were they not regularly hunted from December until April, 

 when their fur is in its prime beauty and condition, they would swarm 

 like the lemming on St. George, and perhaps would soon be obliged 

 to eat one another. The natives, however, thin them out by incessant 

 trapijing and shooting during the period when the seals are away from 

 the islands. 



The Pribilof group is as yet free from rats; at least, none have got 



' The temerity of the fox is wonderful to contemplate, as it goes on a full run or 

 stealthy tread up and down and along the faces of almost inaccessible bluffs, in 

 search of old and young birds and their nests and eggs, for which the "peestchee" 

 have a keen relish. The fox always brings the egg up in its mouth, and, carrying 

 it back a few feet from the brink of the precipice, leisurely and with gusto breaks 

 the larger end and sucks the contents from the shell. One of the curious sights 

 of my notice in this connection was the sly, artful, and insidious advances of 

 Reynard at Tolstoi Mees, St. George, where, conspicuous and elegant in its fluffy 

 white dress, it cunningly stretched on its back as though dead, making no sign of 

 life whatever, save to gently hoist its thick brush now and then; whereupon many 

 dull, curious sea birds, Graculi(s hicristattis, in their intense desire to know all 

 about it, flew in narrowing circles overhead, lower and lower, closer and closer, 

 until one of them came within the sure reach of a sudden spring and a pair of 

 quick snapping jaws, while the gulls and others, rising safe and high above, 

 screamed out in seeming contempt for the struggles of the unhappy "shag," and 

 rendered hideous aijprobation. 



