ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 19 



replaced in turn again bj^ absolute silence, marking out as it were, in 

 lines of sharp aud vivid contrast, summer's life and winter's death. 



The author of that quaint old saying, "Birds of a feather flock 

 together," might well have gained his inspiration had he stood under 

 the high bluffs of St. George at any season, prehistoric or present, 

 during the breeding of the water birds there, where myriads of croak- 

 ing murres and flocks of screaming gulls darken the light of day^ with 

 their fluttering forms, and deafen the ear with their shrill, harsh cries 

 as they do now, for music is denied to all those birds of the sea. 

 Still, in spite of the apparent confusion, he would have taken cogni- 

 zance of the fact that each species had its particular location and 

 kept to its own boundary, according to the precision of natural law. 



Fishes. — With regard to the heri^etology of the islands, I maj^ state 

 that the most careful search on my part was not rewarded by the dis- 

 cover}^ of a single reiDtile. In the province of ichthyology I gathered 

 only a few specimens, the scarcity of fish being easily traceable to the 

 presence of the seals on the grounds here. Naturally enough the 

 finny tribes avoid the seal-churned waters for at least 100 miles 

 around. Among the few specimens, however, which I collected, three 

 or four species new to natural science were found and have since been 

 named by experts in the Smithsonian Institution. 



The presence of such great numbers of amphibian mammalia about 

 the waters, during five or six months of everj^ J^ear, renders all fishing 

 abortive, and unless expeditions are made seven or eight miles at 

 least from the land, and you desire to catch large halibut, it is a waste 

 of time to cast j^our line over the gunwale of the boat. The natives 

 capture "ijoltoos" or halibut, Hippoglossus vulgaris, within two or 

 three miles of the Reef point on St. Paul and the south shore, during 

 Jul}^ and August. After this season the weather is usually so stormy 

 and cold that the fishermen venture no more until the ensuing summer. 



Aquatic invertebrates. — With regard to the MoUusca of the 

 Pribilof waters, the characteristic foi-ms of Toxoglosscda and Hetero- 

 glossafa peculiar to this north latitude are most abundant; of the 

 Cephalopoda I have seen only a species of squid. Sepia loJigo. The 

 clustering whelks, Buccinoid, literallj^ conceal large areas of the 

 bowlders on the beaches here and there; \A\ey are in immense num- 

 bers, and are crushed under your foot at almost every step when you 

 Ijass over long reaches of rocky shingle at low tide. A few of the 

 larger Fusus are found, and tlie live and dead shells of Limiacina are 

 in great abundance wherever the fioating keli? beds afford them 

 shelter. 



On land a very large number of shells of the genera Succinea and 

 Pupa abound all over the islands; on the bluffs of St. George just 

 over Garden Cove I gathered a beautiful Helix. 



The little fresh- water lakes and j)onds contain a great quantity of 

 representatives of the characteristic genera Planorhis, Melania, Lim- 

 iiea, and that pretty little bivalve, the Cyclas. 



Of the Crustacea,th.eAnnelid(e, m\(\Ee1iiirodermota, there is abund- 

 ant representation here. The sea urchins, " repkie " of the natives, 

 are eagerly sought for at low tide and eaten raw by them. The Arctic 

 sea clam, Mya fruncafa, is once in a long time found here (it is the 

 chief food of the walrus of Alaska), and tlie species of Mijtilus, the 

 mussels, so abundant in the Aleutian archipelago, are almost absent 

 here at St. Paul, and only sparingly found at St. Geoi'ge. 



The waters fairly swarm with an enormous number and variety of 

 Medusit or jelly-fishes. 



