MAMMALS. 263 



The greater number of the animals which congregate on the ice are males, according to the 

 natives. These animals are resident throughout the summer in the northern part of Bering Sea. 



Ill fall they coast along the shore, and many of them are netted, and after the ice forms nets 

 are set through the ice about tide-cracks or near their breathing-holes. Others are spread about 

 these latter places. 



Among the skins of this species brought into Saint Michaels a considerable number of me- 

 lanistic examples were seen, some of which were nearly black, with the dark rings almost com- 

 pletely concealed in the general color. 



I found this to be one of the most common species along the Siberian coast, both north and 

 south of Bering Straits, and about Saint Lawrence Island. Mr. Murdoch also records it as the 

 only common species of seal at Point Barrow, where it is resident throughout the year. 



This species is but impei'fectly migratory in Bering Sea ; though some come and go with the 

 ice-pack through Bering Straits, the main body is resident throughout the year. 



After the ice leaves the mouth of the Yukon in spring these animals ascend that stream 

 30 or 40 miles, and are quite numerous on the sand-bars in places far above tidal action. They 

 are shy at this time and difilcult to approach while hauled out. 



This species is probably the most abundant of any of the hair seals over all the northern 

 shores of Bering Sea and the adjacent Arctic basin. 



Phoca geoenlandioa Fabricius. Harp Seal. 



Biographical notes. — The only example of this species seen by me while at Saint Michaels was 

 a young specimen of the second or third year, on which the dark " saddle" marks were just becom- 

 ing apparent. This skin was brought me from Cape Prince of Wales, on the American side of 

 Bering Straits, where it had been taken in the spring when the ice-pack began running north. 

 The native who brought it said that they were not common there, and seemed to consider it the 

 young of the Eibbon Seal, Unfortunately this skin, with those of two Eibbon Seals from the same 

 locality, decayed in the pickle while awaiting my return from the north, so no detailed description 

 could be made. The skull was crushed and destroyed by the hunter. 



This is undoubtedly the seal known to the Norton Sound Eskimo under the name given above, 

 and of which I had vague and unsatisfactory accounts. 



From the fact that among the many thousand sealskins seen by me during my residence and 

 travel along the shore of Bering Sea there was but one of this species, it may be safely considered 

 that this seal is of excessive rarity there. 



Mr. Allen, in his monograph, mentions that Temminck records having examined three skins 

 of this species from Sitka ; but, considering that we have no subsequent record of its capture 

 in that now well-known region, and that it is unknown from the Aleutian Islands and is of such 

 extreme rarity in Bering Sea, that record can be safely considered as more than doubtful. Pallas 

 and Steller both record this species from Kamtchatka, where, like the Eibbon Seal, it may be 

 resident. 



During the cruise of the Corwin in the summer of 1881 1 was fortunate enough to add a little 

 to the known distribution of the*" Saddle-back." While cruising among the ice about Wrangel 

 and Herald Islands several adults were seen, some of which were within a very short distance of 

 the vessel. On August 12, in particular, while we were steaming through the pack off the shore 

 of Wrangel Island, two of these seals were seen close alongside. One came up within 20 yards 

 of us and gazed curiously at the vessel as it pushed agaiust a slowly-yielding mass of ice. 



The chestnut-brown of the animal's head was very conspicuous, and I called Captain Hooper's 

 attention to it, whereupon he said that he had seen a number of these animals in the pack along 

 this coast while there the previous year. This is good evidence that the " Saddle-back " is a regu- 

 lar and not uncommon summer resident in the ice-pack northwest of Bering Straits, and it proba. 

 bly winters there as well. South of Bering Straits its range appears to coincide very closely with 

 that of the Eibbon Seal, but it is very much less common. " Now that attention is called to its 

 presence in this region, future explorers may find it more or less widely distributed, particularly 

 along the Asiatic coast. 



