14 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



pasturage by so doing. The natives of St. Paul have a strange passion for seal-fed pork, and there are quite a 

 large number of hogs on the island of St. Paul and a few on St. George. The pigs soon become entirely carnivorous, 

 living, to the practical exclusiou of all other diet, on the carcasses of seals. 



Chickens are kept with much difficulty, in fact it is only possible to save their lives when the natives take them 

 into their own rooms, or keep them above their heads, in their dwellings, during winter. 



Bird-life. — While the great exhibitiou of piunipedia preponderates over every other feature of animal life on 

 the seal-islands, still we find a wonderful aggregate of ornithological representation thereon. The spectacle of birds 

 nesting and breeding, as they do at St. George island, to the number of millions, flecking those high basaltic blnfls 

 of its shore-line, '29 miles in length, with color-patches of black, brown, and white, as they perch or cling to the 

 mural (;liffs in the labor of incubation, is a sight of exceeding attraction and constant novelty. It affords tbe 

 naturalist an opportunity of a life-time for minute investigation into all the details of the reproduction of these vast 

 tiocks of circumboreal water -fowl. The island of St. Paul, owing to the low character of its shore-line, a large 

 proportion of which is but slightly elevated above the sea and is sandy, is not visited, and cannot be visited, by 

 such myriads of birds as are seen at St. George; but the small, rocky Walrus islet is fairly covered with sea-fowls, 

 and the Otter island bluff's are crowded by them to their utmost capacity of reception. The birds string themselves 

 anew around the cliff's with every succeeding season, like endless ribbons stretched across their nigged faces, while 

 their numbers are siuiplj* countless. The variety is not great, however, in these millions of breeding-birds. It consists 

 of only ten or twelve names; the whole list of avafauna belonging to the Pribylov islands, stragglers and migatory, 

 contains but 40 species. Conspicuous among the last-named class is the robin, a straggler which was brought from 

 the main land, evidently against its own effort, by a storm or a gale of wind, which also brings against their will 

 the solitary hawks, owls, and waders, occasionally noticed here. 



After the dead silence of a long ice bound winter, the ai-rival of large flocks of those sparrows of the north, the 

 "choochkies," P/ifl/er/s wiicTOceros, is most cheerful and interesting. Those i)lump little auks are bright, fearless, 

 vivacious birds, with bodies round and fat. They come usually in chattering flocks on or immediately after the 1st 

 of May, and are caught by the people with hand-scoops or dip-nets to any number that may be required for the 

 day's consumption; their tiny, rotund forms making pies of rare, savory virtue, and being also baked and roasted 

 and stewed in every conceivable shape by the Russian cooks — indeed they are equal to the reed-birds of the South. 

 These welcome visitors are succeeded along about the 20th of July by large flocks of fat, red-legged turn-stones, 

 Strepsilas interpres, which come in suddenly from the west or north, where they have been breeding, and stop on 

 the islands for a month or six weeks, as the case may be, to feed luxuriantly nijon the flesh-flies, which we have 

 just noticed, and their eggs. Those handsome birds go in among the seals, familiarly chasing the flies, gna.ts, etc. 

 They are followed, as they leave in September, by several species of jack-snipe and a plover, Tringa and Charadrius; 

 these, however, soon depart, as early as the end of October and the beginning of November, and then winter fairly 

 closes in upon the islands; the loud, roaring, incessant seal-din, together with the screams and darkening flight of 

 innumerable water-fowl, are replaced in turn again by absolute silence, marking out as it were in lines of sharp and 

 vivid contrast, summer's life and winter's death. 



The author of that quaint old saying, "Birds of a feather flock together," might well have gained his inspiration 

 had he stood under the high bluff's of St. George at any season, prehistoric or present, during the breeding of the 

 water-birds there, where myriads of croaking murres and flocks of screaming gulls darken the light of day with 

 their fluttering forms, and deafen the ear with their shrill, haVsh cries as they do now, for music is denied to all 

 those birds of the sea. Still, in spite of the apparent confusion, he would have taken cognizance of the fact, that 

 each species had its particular location and kept to its own boundary, according to the precision of natural law. 



Fishes. — With regard to the herpetology of the islands, I may state that the most careful search on my part 

 was not I'ewarded by the discovery of a single reptile. In the pro^'ince of ichthyology I gathered only a few 

 specimens, the scarcity of fish being easily traceable to the presence of the seals on the grounds here. Naturally 

 enough the finny tribes avoid the seal-clfurned waters for at least one hundred miles around. Among the few 

 si)ecimens, however, which I collected, three or four species new to natural science were found and have since been 

 named by experts in the Smithsonian Institution. 



The ijresence of such great numbers of amphibian mammalia fibout the waters, during five or six months of 

 every year, renders all fishing abortive, and unless expeditious are made seven or eight miles at least from the fand, 

 and you desire to catch large halibut, it is a waste of time to cast your line over the gunwhale of the boat. The 

 natives capture "poltoos" or halibut, Hippoglossus vulgaris, within two or three miles of the Eeef-point on St. 

 Paul and the south shore during July and August. After this season the weather is usually so stormy and cold 

 that the fishermen venture no more until the ensuing summer. 



Aquatic invertebrates.— With regard to the Mollusca of the Pribylov waters, the characteristic forms of 

 Toxoglossata and Beteroglossata peculiar to this north latitude are most abundant; of the Cephalopoda I have 

 seen only a species of squid, Bepla loUgo. Tbe clustering whelks, Bucciiioii, Uterally conceal large areas of the 

 bowlders on the beaches here and there; they are in immense numbers, and are crushed under your foot at almost 



