96 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
shipment left the islands April 7 on the Bureau’s tender Lider, was 
transferred to the Alaska Steamship Co.’s steamship Victoria at 
Unalaska on April 19 for shipment to Seattle, Wash., and left the 
latter place on April 27 for St. Louis by freight via Northern Pacific 
to Minnesota Transfer and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, arriving 
at St. Louis May 20. 
On June 22 the U.S. S. Saturn took the remainder of the 1919 
skins from St. Paul Island; the shipment was made up of 37 casks 
containing 505 skins. The Saturn proceeded to Bremerton, Wash., 
from which place the skins were forwarded July 7 to St. Louis by 
the same route as the first shipment. They arrived at St. Louis 
Jul 26. 
The third shipment consisted of 476 casks containing 21,929 skins 
from St. Paul Island and 24 casks containing 1,133 skins from St. 
George Island; all were skins of the 1920 take. The skins were 
placed on board the Saturn November 25 for transportation to 
Seattle, Wash., left that place December 6, and arrived at St. 
Louis December 15, having been shipped by freight via Northern 
Pacific to Billings, and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy to St. Louis. 
This shipment made remarkably good time between Seattle and St. 
Louis, arriving in a little less than nine days. 
Thirteen specimen skins were also shipped during the year. Four 
of these were from St. George Island and nine from St. Paul Island. 
The skins were brought south on the Saturn, arrived at Seattle 
September 26, and were shipped from there by express to the Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History at New York City. 
Fox skins.—A single shipment of fox skins was made during 1920. 
This shipment consisted of 4 cases containing 155 blue and 33 white 
fox skins from St. Paul Island and 18 cases containing 746 blue and 
4 white skins from St. George Island, a total of 938 skins. These 
cases were shipped in the same manner as the first shipment of seal- 
skins as far as Seattle, via the Bureau’s vessel “7?der and the com- 
mercial steamer Victoria, and from Seattle to St. Louis by express, 
where they arrived May 3. 
SALES OF FUR-SEAL SKINS. 
Two sales of dressed, dyed, and machined fur-seal skins from the 
Pribilof Islands were held in St. Louis during the calendar year 1920. 
One was on February 2 and the other May 10, at which times 9,100 
and 5,752 skins were sold at auction for totals of $1,282,905 and 
$424,166, respectively. 
The highest price secured at the February sale was for a lot of 
70 skins, which brought $177 each; the average price obtained was 
$140.97, an increase of nearly 55 per cent over the average price at 
the preceding sale in September, 1919. At the sale in May the maxi- 
mum price was $125 per skin on two lots of wigs, 50 skins in each 
lot. The average price for the May sale was $73.74, showing a 
decrease of about 48 per cent as compared with the February sale. 
The first two of the following tables show details regarding the 
prices secured for each lot of skins in the two sales; the third table 
is a summary showing prices obtained for the skins in the various 
trade classes, with the percentages which the number of the skins in 
these several classes bore to the totals in each sale. 
