1903 ] Allen, Mammals from Northeast Siberia. 163 



mouths, within a stone's throw of your boat, and gaze in 

 mild-eyed astonishment at you for a few seconds, give a snort, 

 and disappear. Salmon can be seen jumping clear out of the 

 water in all directions in their efforts to escape the seals. 

 The Koryaks and Tunguses pitch their tents during July and 

 August along the head of the Gichiginski Gulf at places where 

 streams flow in and get many of these and of the Bearded 

 Seal by shooting them from bidarkas and spearing them with 

 retrieving harpoons along the rocky headlands. 



"Catherine Gulf, 40 miles southwest from Gichiga on the 

 mainland coast, is a long tongue-like indentation in the pre- 

 cipitous coast-line, 200 yards wide and a mile long. At low 

 tide the water in it is quite shallow, and many rocks on its 

 bottom and along its side are exposed. On the morning of 

 August n, 1901, I came suddenly on this little gulf while 

 down the coast goose shooting, and every one of the hundreds 

 of available rocks in it was occupied by seals mostly this 

 species and a few Bearded Seals basking in the bright sun- 

 light. At the report of my gun they all slid into the water 

 and started for the open sea. 



"Hair seals are much more abundant in the Okhotsk Sea 

 than they are at any point along the Alaskan coast. They 

 form a considerable part of the food of all the people, natives 

 and Russians, living near the Okhotsk Sea, as they do of all 

 the people inhabiting the high north. The skins of this 

 species have a commercial value of one rouble each at Gichiga, 

 and are used for boots, lines, and dog harness. 



"Mr. Sokolnikoff assured me 'that in summer it ascended 

 the Anadyr River nearly to Marcova." x N. G. B. 



25. Ursus beringianus (Middendorff) . 

 KAMCHATKA BEAR. 



The collection contains five more or less imperfect flat skins 

 of bears, only one of which has a skull. They probably all 

 belong to one species, the variation in size and color being 



1 This statement refers to the subspecies Phoca ochotensis macrodens Allen. See 

 this Bulletin, XVI, 1902, pp. 483-485. 



