ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 463 



delightful assurance that he is never shot at or trapped at this time of 

 the year. At the present hour they are shedding, and they look 

 scrubby enough. Generally, the old hair on the tail hangs the lougest, 

 even after all is renewed everywhere else on their bodies. Thus you 

 constantly see around you now, a bluish -gray fox running off with a 

 Huffy, dried-grass colored tail — a very odd-looking contrast. 



July 7, 1890. — From a station on the bluffs overlooking the entire 

 stretch of the cliff belt of the breeding seals at Tolstoi, I passed two 

 hours this afternoon, intently observing the service which the bulls 

 below were rendering. There were 67 bulls directly within distinct 

 sweep of my vision: distinctly and widely separated; and these bulls 

 had some 2,000 to 2,500 cows. It is fairly idle to attempt to express 

 the perfect impotency of these overdone and feeble old males; sleepiug 

 or dozing nearly all of the time: and, on waking, teased by the females 

 without arousing them in the least. I saw in these two full hours of 

 attentive watching only three attempts to serve the cows by these 67 

 bulls, and each attempt was a languid failure. Not a single half hull 

 or polseecatch attempting to land here or anytvhere else for that matter 

 on the rookeries to-day. How many of these cows are going off" without 

 impregnation if not served when in heat? Do they ever return for itf 

 And if they do, where is that service to come from'? Certainly not 

 from those already useless bulls which are hourly growing weaker as 

 the season culminates. 1 saw to-day a nubile female and an older 

 one engaged at the same moment in teasing a languid old bull, which 

 made an ineffectual attempt to satisfy one of them, and failed. I never 

 witnessed such a scene in all of my observations of 1872-1874. Then 

 there were twenty bulls where there is one now, and three times or four 

 times as many cows. Late in the rutting season, about the 20th to the 

 24th of July, an occasional exhibition of languid impotence was seen : 

 but, it made no impression on my mind other than to note the fact that 

 here and there was a bull which was physically exhausted, chiefly from 

 the effects of fighting. Still there were then so many virile bulls right 

 around it, ready and eager, that it did not signify. 



One of the odd orders at Tolstoi is the fact that the best massing of 

 the cows now is seen down on the sand at the extreme extension of the 

 rookery out toward Middle Hill. It gives one the only suggestion of 

 what the comjiact solid massing of the rookery was in 1872, and which 

 massing is now utterly lacking on these breeding grounds of St. Paul 

 and St. George. 



There are few cows, pups, and bulls to-day on that cliff belt of Tolstoi. 

 Instead of an area of 36 feet in width, densely covered, as in 1872, to- 

 day there is an area of only 1,750 by 10 feet covered, equal to 17,500 

 feet, or ground for 8,750 seals — bulls, cows, and i)ups — instead 36,750, 

 as in 1872. 



That parade ground up and over this breeding belt under the cliffs 

 at Tolstoi is wholly deserted by the JiolluscJiieMe. Not a single animal 

 has hauled out there upon its grassy patched surface thus far, this 

 season. Out near the point, is that queer climbing path up the cliffs 

 from the sea to this ground. Here in 1872 I have sat for hours at a 

 time watching the seals come up and go down in ceaseless files of 

 hundreds and thousands, actually climbing up places so steep that it 

 was all an agile man could do to follow them safely. 



I saw about 50 or 60 holluschickie on the cliff steps to this path 

 to-day: but, none of them seem inclined to go up on to the old parade 

 ground above. The natives call this particular locality "Bobrovia 

 yama," or the "sea otter cave." 



