126 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 265. 



for a long series of years, but not until re- 

 cently lias any attempt been made to study 

 these animals with the view of not only 

 systematically feeding and trapping them, 

 but of endeavoring to effect such changes 

 in their environment as would tend to make 

 them polygamous. This attempt has been 

 made by Mr. James Judge, who has for 

 several years been Treasury Agent on the 

 island of St. George, who has taken much 

 interest in the fur seal and fox question, 

 and to whom the information contained in 

 this article is entirely due. From its iso- 

 lation, its hilly, rocky character, and from 

 the vast numbers of birds which resort to it 

 for a breeding place, this island is admirably 

 suited for the abode of the fox, the great 

 drawback being the lack of food during the 

 winter. This lack of food not only acts 

 directly on the foxes by starving them, but 

 causes them to abandon the island and go 

 out on the floe ice whenever this drifts 

 down upon the island, as it often, or usually 

 does in early spring. In summer the foxes 

 feed upon birds and eggs and to some slight 

 extent, upon dead seal pups and the placenta 

 dropped from those recently born. The 

 bodies of the seals on the killing grounds 

 are eaten to some extent, but these bodies 

 rapidly decay, and besides during the kill- 

 ing season the supply of other food is most 

 abundant. 



Since the advent of pelagic sealing the 

 foxes have had an abundant, though brief, 

 supply of food in the fall in the shape of the 

 seal pups whose mothers have been taken at 

 sea, and who have starved in consequence. 

 In 1896 every starved pup was devoured by 

 the foxes, so that no actual count of them 

 could be made, but from an estimate made 

 by comparison with the known facts on St. 

 Paul Island, their number was probably 

 considerably over 2000, while in previous 

 years it was much greater. The foxes have 

 fed to some extent'on the Pribilof Lemming, 

 Lemnus nigripes, and seem to have nearly 



exterminated the little creature, since but 

 one specimen was seen in 1896-97. In win- 

 ter the foxes eat anything that comes to 

 hand, extraordinary as it may seem, subsist- 

 ing to a considerable extent on sea urchins, 

 Strongylocentrotus drobacJiiensis, which are 

 gathered at low tide. Considerable grass is 

 found in their stomachs in winter and some 

 worms, which they scratch up on the killing 

 grounds, as well as with a few tunicates and 

 an occasional fish bone ; but it may be said 

 that in winter the foxes lead a precarious 

 existence. Some not very energetic at- 

 tempts have been made to introduce the 

 Cottontail Eabbit on St. Paul Island, and 

 the Cottontail and Jack Eabbit elsewhere,, 

 but so far without success ; the proposed in- 

 troduction of the Spermophile, SpermopMlus 

 empetra, which is found at Unalaska, would 

 probably succeed better. 



On the Aleutian Islands dried salmon has 

 been used for feeding the foxes in winter, 

 and on St. George the experiment was also 

 tried of using cracklings and linseed meal. 

 This latter was evidently not to the foxes' 

 taste, but it was found that by mixing the 

 meal with seal oil it was eagerly devoured. 

 In 1897 Mr. Judge decided to use the car- 

 casses of the fur seals taken for skins, but' 

 as the catch on the Island of St. George has 

 of late years become so small that the bulk 

 of the meat is eaten by the inhabitants, a 

 number of bodies were salted and brought 

 over from the neighboring island of St. 

 Paul. Mr. Judge tried the experiment of 

 putting down fresh carcasses in silos, as well 

 as of salting them, and this plan has, with 

 one exception, been entirely suceessfal. The 

 exception was when some seventy foxes ef- 

 fected an entrance into one of the pits, 

 where they feasted to such an extent before 

 being discovered, that a few died. The 

 salted bodies were freshened by protracted 

 soaking before being fed to the foxes. As 

 the trapping season drew near these car- 

 casses were placed at night in the vicinity 



