690 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



mary of furs purcliased by Russian- American traders, given in Petrofif's 

 report, mentioned above (pp. 895-899), we find that these foxes have been 

 taken on the Pribilof Islands since 1842. 



It is certaiuly not true at the present time that the foxes " feed and 

 grow fat on sick aiid weakly seals, also devouring many pups." It is 

 probable that they eat the dead pups late in the season which have 

 st.arved. On St. George Island in 189G practically all such pups were 

 eaten ui). It may be that they also occasionally attack a starving i)up, 

 but the number of healthy, vigorous pups injured by them must be 

 small. 



Page 19 : There is no special scarcity of fishes about the Pribilof 

 Islands as compared with other islands in Bering Sea. Apparently 

 the seals rarely, if ever, feed near the ishinds. 



Page 23. "Holluschickie" seems to us an undesirable spelling of the 

 Russian word "holostiaki," the plural of "holustiak," the bachelor seal. 



Page 37: The statement that ''there is no need of i)rotecting the fur- 

 bearing animals (elsewhere than on the seal islands), unless it be by a 

 few wholesome general restrictions in regard to the sea-otter chase," 

 needs some qualification in the light of subsequent events. "The 

 nigged, forbidding, and inhospitable exterior" of Alaska is no bar to 

 the skin hunter, any more than is the rough and temi)estuous waters 

 of Bering Sea to the i^elagic sealer. 



Page 39: The reasons for leasing the right to take skins to a respon- 

 sible company are well stated by Mr. Elliott, and his statements have 

 now a historic value as representing the view at that time. It is ditfi- 

 cult, however, to understand why in case the Government undertook to 

 sell the skins on its own account to the highest bidder the sale should 

 be conducted on the islands rather than at San Francisco, for example. 

 But even if it did involve the licensing of "a thousand ships to be 

 l)resent at the sale," the statement which follows, that "the rattlii]g of 

 their anchor chains and the scraping of their keels on the beaches of 

 the two islands would alone drive every seal a^Yay and over to the 

 Russian grounds in a remarkably short space of time," is clearly absurd. 

 The notion that the Pribilof seals might in some way or other be driven 

 to the Commander Islands or to Japan has arisen every year from 18G8 

 to 1897, and it never had a i)article of justification. 



Page 43: The differences between the fur seal, or "sea bear," and the 

 true or hair seal noticed by Mr. Elliott are great and fundamental. 

 Except that they are botl> pelagic carnivora, feeding on fish, the two 

 animals have scarcely anj^thing in common. 



Page 47 : " Sikatcli " is preferable to " See Catch." Mr. Elhott spells 

 Jiussian names according to their English pronunciation instead of fol- 

 lowing the accepted method of transliteration. 



We have every reason to believe that the bull returns each year to 

 his former stand as a matter of preference. He goes elsewhere if he 

 can do better or if he is foiced to do worse. With the females and 

 young males the place of return is doubtless less definite, though in the 

 case of the adult cows, at least, preference has evidently to do largely 

 with choice of location. 



Page 48: The fighting among the bulls here referred to as going on 

 " morning, noon, and night without cessation " is greatly exaggerated. 

 A certain amount of " bluffing " is constantly to be seen on the rookeries, 

 but real fighting is not very conspicuous. According to the observa- 

 tions of the season of 1897 there is very little fighting before the cows 

 begin to arrive, and these straggle in so slowly and (piietly at first as 

 to attract little attention from the bulls. The real fighting occurs at 



