ANIMALS AND BIRDS 59 



their meat for food and with their skins for clothing are, so far 

 as I had opportunity to observe, hair seals, ^20 large and small 

 sharks, 121 whales, and plenty of sea otters, the excrements of 

 which I found everywhere along the shore; from this circumstance 

 it may also be concluded that the natives, because otherwise 

 sufficiently provided with food, do not trouble themselves greatly 

 about them, since otherwise these animals would not have come 

 ashore, any more than they now do in Kamchatka, where there 

 are so many people interested in their pelts. Of land animals, 

 aside from what has been inferred above about the reindeer, I, 

 as well as others, saw at various times black and red foxes^^z 

 and did not find them particularly shy, perhaps because they 

 are hunted but little. — Of birds I saw only two familiar species, 

 the raven and the magpie ;i23 however, of strange and unknown 

 ones I noted more than ten different kinds, all of which w^ere 

 easily distinguished from the European and Siberian [species] by 

 their very particularly bright coloring. Good luck, thanks to 

 my huntsman, placed in my hands a single specimen, of which I 

 remember to have seen a likeness painted in lively colors and 

 described in the newest account of the birds and plants of the 

 Carolinas published in French and English, the name of the 

 author of which, however, does not occur to me now.* This bird 



120 The "Seehunde" mentioned are probably referable to the Pacific 

 harbor seal {Phoca richardii Gray), which occurs from California to the 

 Aleutian Islands and eastern Bering Sea (see Allen, Bull. Amer. Museum 

 of Nat. Hist., Vol. 16, 1902, pp. 459-499). (S) 



121 The number of species of sharks known from Kamchatkan and 

 Alaskan waters is not great. The large and small sharks seen by Steller 

 may well have been the mackerel shark (Lamna cornubica (Gmelin)) 

 and the dogfish (Squalus sucklii (Girard)), both common in the region. 

 (S) 



122 Black and red foxes, probably Vulpes kenaiensis Merriam. (S) 



123 Raven: Corvus cor ax principalis Ridgway; magpie: Pica pica 

 hudsonia (Sabine). (S) 



* The late lamented [Steller] refers to the work of the English traveler 

 Catesby [Mark Catesby: The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and 

 the Bahama Islands, etc., 2 vols., London, 1731-43] and to Plate 15 in 

 Vol. I of the English edition, on which the North American blue jay 



