FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY. 99 
In 1916 the California Academy of Sciences made a request for 
sufficient material to enable a mounted group to be installed in its 
museum in San Francisco. It was not practicable to secure sufficient 
animals at the Pribilofs for this purpose untilin 1918. In all, 13 pups 
and 16 older seals, a total of 29 specimens, were collected and shipped 
to this institution in 1917 and 1918. The records of these animals 
were made separately from the regular take of skins. 
Existing law requires that all sealskins from the Pribilof Islands 
shall be sold and the proceeds covered into the Treasury. In arriving 
at a price to be fixed for such specimens from dead animals, considera- 
tion has been taken of the fact that many of them are worthless com- 
mercially and for others it would be difficult to obtain an equitable 
appraisement. Therefore, the sum of $1 each was fixed as the 
value of the pups and $5 each for all older animals. The institution 
securing the specimens paid all charges for labor and transportation 
connected therewith. 
DEATH OF FUR SEALS AT AQUARIUM. 
The two Alaska fur seals which have been at the Washington 
aquarium of the Bureau since the summer of 1909 died in 1918, 
the female on September 1 and the male on September 25. Autopsies 
were performed by experts of the Bureau of Animal Industry and 
showed the cause of the death of the female to be congestion of the 
lungs, and of the male to be acute general enteritis, perhaps of bac- 
terial origin. 
These two seals were born at St. Paul Island, Bering Sea, in July, 
1909. Shortly afterwards they were found to be waifs whose mothers 
had been killed at sea by hunters, and they would have starved to 
death, as so many thousands of their kind did every year, had they 
not been bottle-fed during the early weeks of their existence. They 
were the only Alaskan fur seals which have borne confinement more 
than a year or two. Several lots brought to the States as pups and 
distributed to aquaria and zoological gardens succumbed in a short 
time. An interesting fact is that whereas in nature fu seals never 
enter fresh water, these particular individuals had‘ never been in 
salt water. 
FOXES. 
SEASON OF 1917-18. 
Only one species of fox is found on the Pribilofs, Vulpes pribdilof- 
ensis Merriam. It appears in both the blue and white color phases, 
with the former predominating. In fact, through the system of cap- 
ture employed on St. George Island since 1897, the proportion of 
white foxes has been reduced to a negligible factor. On St. Paul 
approximately 25 per cent of the skins secured are white. Pribilof 
Island blue foxes have long been considered the best which reach 
the markets. Although there is a small percentage of poorer grades, 
as would be expected among so large a number, in the main the fur 
is long, dark, and silky. 
The method of feeding and trapping established on St. George 
Island in 1897 by James Judge has been highly successful. The 
Bureau plans to take active steps to establish it in the near future 
on St. Paul Island. 
