THE MOLLUSKS OF THE PRIBILOP ISLANDS. 541 



to enumerate its species, many of which are new, characteristic, and peculiar. A 

 number of them have been described and figured,' but many more remain to be worked 

 up. A few of them farther south descend into the Archibenthal region and extend 

 their range as far south as the Galapagos Islands, off the South American coast, but 

 the great majority seem to be limited to the Bering Sea plateau. 



In a certain sense the inhabitants of this plateau might be regarded as forming 

 part of the fauna of the Pribilofs, although' never found upon the beaches; but I have 

 in the accompanying list of Pribilof shells included only a few of them which have 

 been dredged in comparatively shallow water close to the islands. They are marked 

 with an asterisk to distinguish them from the littoral species. It might be considered 

 proper to enumerate as belonging to the Pribilof fauna all littoral species which have 

 been found both south and north from the islands, as a thorough search would probably 

 reveal them somewhere about the group. But for present purposes I have preferred 

 to catalogue only such species as have actually been collected by some one on the 

 islands, though it is certain that by this method the total number of species is con- 

 siderably underrated. 



The first collections made on the islands were gathered by Elia Wossnessenski, a • 

 preparator of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, who was sent out 

 for the purpose of obtaining for the Zoological Museum a full representation of the 

 fauna and flora of Eussian- America. He spent three years in the colony, and his 

 shells were worked up by Middendorff in his Malacozoologia Eossica and Sibirische 

 Eeise, 1849-1854. 



No other collector appears to have visited the Pribilofs for many years In 1868 

 I made a small collection from the beaches of St. George, but was unable to do any 

 dredging. In 1874 and 1880 I visited St. Paul and St. George and did a little dredg- 

 ing, but with scanty results. A few species were collected by Messrs. H. W. Elliott 

 and William Palmer in 1880. Later the work of the Albatross for the United States 

 Fish Commission resulted in rich collections from the plateau region of Bering Sea, 

 but very few specimens were actually obtained on the islands. 



The following list includes all the species which I have been able to determine as 

 actually collected on the islands. I have noted in separate columns the species found 

 on St. Paul and St. George and have given in parallel columns the range of these 

 species in Japan, on the Kamchatka coast, in the Arctic Ocean, the Aleutian chain, 

 and California. Species collected by Wossnessenski are indicated by a capital W, 

 others noted by Middendorff with an M ; Palmer's species by a P ; those collected on 

 the voyage of the Vega by a V; the Albatross shells by A; my own by a D, and others 

 by an X. 



It must be distinctly understood that this list can not be regarded as complete, 

 since none of the collectors made thorough search on shore or by dredging. However, 

 the catalogue will serve for a beginning, and doubtless includes the majority of the 

 species most likely to be found on the shores of the island. 



There are only three land shells known from the group — a Pupa, 8uccinea, and a 

 Vitrina — all of which are common to the Kamchatka coast as well as the north- 

 eastern coast of Bering Sea. There is much probability that a search by a competent 

 collector would reveal several small species of Zonitidae, Pupidae, etc. ; and probably 

 Pisidium exists in the "pools of St. Paul, as it does on many of the Aleutians. 



1 Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., XIV, pp. 186-190, ,July 1891 ; and XVII, pp. 706-713, 1895. 



