154 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES [Proc. 4th Ser. 



points to the conclusion that they have never been united to any 

 of the near-by islands or continents. They appear to have been 

 "Oceanic" from the time of their birth and this was not earlier 

 than the Pliocene period. The fauna and flora of the islands 

 must have arrived chiefly through agencies other than human 

 because they were not inhabited at the time of their discovery in 

 1786. Insects might reach them by means of several carriers, 

 such as drift ice, floating trees, river-bank sod floating on ice, 

 air currents and birds. Little definite information is to be had 

 on this subject and very few records of the prevailing ocean and 

 air currents are available. Nevertheless the animals, other than 

 the insects and the plants, are more closely related to those of 

 Alaska than to those of Siberia ; however, a mingling of elements 

 from both regions is evident. 



As the Pribilofs are the home of the Alaska fur-seals, they 

 are of great commercial value to the United States, and the study 

 of these mammals brings to them almost every season one or 

 more men interested in some branch of biology. Usually they 

 are able to devote some spare time to the collecting of specimens, 

 and it is through their activities that the wild life of the Pribilofs 

 has become better known than that of any similar area in northern 

 North America. 



Unfortunately, however, the region has never been thoroughly 

 worked by a trained entomologist. Professor Trevor Kincaid 

 landed there for a short time with the Harriman Alaska Expe- 

 dition, and he was also attached to the Fur-Seal Commission in 

 1897. Mr. J. August Kusche landed on St. George Island for 

 a few hours in 1913 and collected some insects which are sup- 

 posed to have gone to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa. 



Incidental collecting has been done by various men as oppor- 

 tunity from other work permitted. The members of the Fur- 

 Seal Commission of 1896-97 were the earlier contributors and 

 as a result of their activities a paper was published on the insects 

 of the islands in 1899 1 . Also some records were published in 

 the results of the Harriman Expedition. Otherwise the insects 

 are mentioned only incidentally and in widely scattered papers 2 . 



1 Fur-seals and Fur-seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean, pt. 3, pp. 547-554. 

 1899.) 



2 The reader is referred to Bulletin XXXIV, Document No. 820, U. S. 

 Bureau of Fisheries, 1915, for a partial bibliography of the Pribilof Islands and 

 their life. Further information may be secured from the Annual Reports of the 

 same Bureau under the Appendix entitled "Alaska Fisheries and Fur Industries." 



