210 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



coop them up in the corners. They get return in eggs. But of all the 

 forlorn, wretched, bedraggled specimens of domestic foAvls, those that 

 have to shiver and shake themselves outside Avhen viewed on the seal 

 islands are the most miserable. They do not exactly freeze, but the 

 raw, damp, incessant violence of the weather keeps them inactive and 

 cowering for such long, unbroken periods that their feathers seem to 

 fall out,"and disease marks them for its own. 



OoLOGiCAL WEALTH OF Walrus ISLAND. — I am much divided in 

 my admiration of the two great bird rookeries of the Pribilof group, 

 the one on the face of the high bluffs at St. George and the other on 

 the table top of Walrus Islet; but perhaps the latter place gives, 

 within the smallest area, the greatest variety of nesting and breed- 

 ing birds, for here the " arrie" and many gulls, cormorants, sea par- 

 rots, and auks come to lay their eggs in countless numbers. The foot 

 and brow of the low, cliif-like sea fronts to this island are occupied 

 almost exclusively by the "arries," Lomvia arm, which lay a single 

 egg each on the surface on the bare rock and stand just like so many 

 champagne bottles straddling over them while hatching, only leav- 

 ing at irregular intervals to feed, and then not until their mates 

 reUeve them. Hundreds of thousands of these birds alone are thus 

 engaged about the 29th of every June on this little rocky island, 

 standing stacked up together as tight as so many sardines in a box — 

 as thickly as they can be stowed— each of them uttering an incessant, 

 deep, low, hoarse, grunting noise. How fiercely they quarrel among 

 themselves— everlastingly -^ and in this way thousands of eggs are 

 rolled off into the sea, or into crevices, or into fissures, where they are 

 lost and broken. 



Toughness of arrie eggshells.— The " arrie " lays but one egg. 

 If it is removed or broken she will soon lay another; but if undis- 

 turbed after depositing the first she undertakes its hatching at once. 

 The size, shape, and coloration of this egg among the thousands 

 which came under my observation are exceedingly variable. A large 

 proportion of the eggs become so dirty by rolling here and there in 

 the uuano while the "birds tread and fight over them as to be almost 

 unrecognizable. I was struck by the happy adaptation of nature to 

 their rough nesting. It is fouud'^in the toughness of the shell of the 

 egg_so tough that the natives when gathering them throw them as 

 farmers do apples into their tubs and baskets on the cliffs, and then 

 carry them down to the general heap of collection near the boats' 

 landing, where they pour them out upon the rocks with a single flip 

 of the hand, just as a sack of potatoes would be emptied; and then 

 again after this they are quite as carelessly handled when loaded 

 into the "bidarrah," sustaining through it all a very trifling loss from 

 cruslied or l)roken ones. 



Bird zones on Walrus Islet.— Those "arries" seem to occupy 

 a ribbon in width, and draw around the outward edges of the flfit 

 table top to Walrus Island a regular belt, keeping all to themselves, 

 while the small grassy interior from which they are thus excluded is 

 the only place, I believe, in Bering Sea where the great white gull, 

 Larufi glaucus, breeds. Here I found among the little mossy tussocks 

 the buro-omaster building a nest of dry grass, sea ferns, Sertularni(v, 

 etc., very nicely laid up and rounded, and in which it laid usually three 

 eggs, sometimes only a couple. Occasionally I would look into a nest 

 with four. These big birds could not breed on either of the other 

 islands in this manner, for the glaucous gull is too large to settle on 

 the narrow shelf ledges of the cliffs, as the smaller Laridce and other 



