208 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



The result of their combined action is still traditionally recorded in the navy in the 

 words of a sailor, too forcible, unluckily, for publication virginibus puerisque. 

 At any rate, they got well beaten, but returned next year, and destroyed the 

 place, which the Russians, with their characteristic strategy, had meanwhile 

 abandoned. Dr. Guillemard thinks Avatcha Bay "one of the finest harbours 

 in the world, if not " actually the finest; " but the town of Petropaulovsyk had 

 not at the time of his visit, recovered from its desertion and destruction ; and 

 was simply a poor undefended fur-trade settlement. Fishing and shooting were 

 good, and amongst other birds our author notices (and figures) two very quaint- 

 looking sea-fowl, the Whiskered Puffin (Lunda Cirrhata) and the Tufted Auk (Simo- 

 rhynchus cristatellus). In the latter the frontal crest curves forward, giving a 

 strange air of martial swagger to this peaceable little water-fuwl. 



Ashore, the most remarkable and abundant mammal was the sledge-dog; who 

 outnumbers humanity, in Kamschatka, by about 400 per cent., and is so far 

 master of the situation that " owing to his rapacity, it is impossible to keep sheep, 

 goats, or anv of the smaller domestic animals, and Kamschatka is one of the 

 few countries in the world in which fowls are unknown. " In mitigation it has 

 to be observed that except when actually at work, these dogs are never, or 

 rarely, fed ; and, instead of having kennels, are reduced to burrowing for shelter. 

 "A dog's life," says Dr. Guillemard " is here most appropriately realized." To 

 prevent the dogs, when collected for work, from quarrelling, they are picketed one 

 to each foot of triangles of poles arranged like piled rifles ; aud this although the 

 males are subjected, as pups, to a pacificatory operation. 



A party from the "Marchesa" undertook to march overland from Petropaulovsky 

 to the Kamschatka river, and descend the latter on rafts, floated on dug-out 

 canoes of poplar wood ; and accomplished this exploration with success. Their ac- 

 count of the interior is, in short, that " every prospect pleases, and only man is vile," 

 especially when well crossed with Russian; the aborigines being, comparatively 

 civil and honest. It is quite clear that the game was not worth the candle, and 

 that nearly all they saw worth seeing could have been better got at by ascending 

 the river from its mouth in their own boats. 



They shot one bear and one sable (out of season), many ptarmigan, doubtfully 

 identified as Lagopus albus (no specimens were preserved), Ernes (Haliaetus 

 albicilla) Phalaropes (L. hyperboreus) and ducks, which our author does not 

 specify, though he appends a list of Kamschatkan birds, borrowed, with due 

 acknowledgment, from Dr. Leonard Stejneger. 



Of the ducks, however, Dr. Guillemard tells us one thing; a new way of 

 cooking them a la kamsckatkaine, which he recommends : — -"The bird is plucked 

 with care, so as to leave the skin unbroken : and is not drawn. A stick is thrust 

 down the throat, and the otber end stuck into the ground close to the fire. The 

 effect produced when a party of a dozen are thus cooking their suppers is not a 

 little absurd ; it is as if the camp-fire had burst into a perfect girandole 

 of naked ducks, who fly quacking from it in open-mouthed alarm." The party 

 saw, but did nofc obtain, the fine sea-eagle of Pallas (Thalassaelus pelagicus). But 

 the most interesting record of their journey to the naturalist is the notice of the 

 strange and numerous Salmonidae of the Kamschatkan rivers. The number of 



