214 OUP. ARCTIC I'ROVINCE. 



vary this search by poking, witli a short-handled hook, into holes 

 and rocky crevices for a small cottoid fish, which is also found here 

 at low water in this manner. Specimens of this cottoid which I 

 brought down declared themselves as representatives of a new de- 

 partux-e from all other recognized forms in which the sculpin is 

 known to sport ; hence the name, generic and si^ecific. The '• sand- 

 cake," echinarachinus, is also very common here. 



By May 28th to the middle of June a fine table-crab, large, fat, 

 and sweet, with a light, brittle shell, is taken while it is skurrying 

 in and out of the lagoon as the tide ebbs and flows. It is the best- 

 flavored crustacean known to Alaskan waters. They are taken no- 

 where else at St. Paul, and when on St. George I failed to see one. 

 I am not certain as to the accuracy of the season of running, viz. : 

 May 28th to June 15th, inasmuch as one of my little note-books 

 on which this date is recorded turns out to be missing at the pres- 

 ent writing, and I am obliged to give it from memory. The only 

 economic shell-fish which the islands aflbrd is embodied in this 

 Chionoecetes opilio {?). The natives affirm an existence of mussels 

 here in abundance when the Pril^ylov group was first discovered ; 

 but now only a small supj^ly of inferior size and quality is to be 

 found. 



With reference to the jelly-fishes, Iledusce, which are so abun- 

 dant in the waters around these islands, their exceeding number and 

 variety and beauty startled and enchanted me. An enormous ag- 

 gregate of these creatures, some of them exquisitely delicate and 

 transhicent, ride in and out of the lagoon at St. Paul when the 

 si:)ring-tides flow and ebb. Myriads of them are annually stranded, 

 to decay on the sandy flats of this estuar}'. 



As to sea-weeds, or mosses, — the extent, luxuriance, variety, and 

 beauty of the algse forests of those waters of Bering Sea which 

 lave the coasts of the Pribylov Islands, call for more detail of de- 

 scription than space in this volume will allow, since anything like a 

 fair presentation of the subject would require the reproduction of 

 my water-colored drawings. After all heavier gales, especially the 

 southeasters in October, if a naturalist will take the trouble to 

 walk the sand-beach between Lukannou and northeast jDoint of St. 

 Paul Island, he will be rewarded by the memorable sight. He 

 will find thrown up by the surf a vast windrow of kelp along the 

 whole eight or ten miles of this walk — heaped, at some spots, nearly 

 as high as his head ; the large trunks of Melanospermce, the small, 



