160 Fish Stories 



comes the Alaska pollack, Theragra chalco gramma, a kind 

 of cod found in Bering Sea convenient to the rookeries. 

 For the rest an occasional fish of any kind available. A 

 great many fish altogether, to be sure, but think of the 

 quantities of fish that other fishes eat 



During the rest of the season the cows and pups, bulls 

 and bachelors, come and go from the water and sleep on the 

 rookeries and sand beaches. In November and December, 

 when the winter storms come on, they leave the islands, 

 class by class, and go down through the passes of the Aleu- 

 tian chain into the Pacific ocean. The cows and pups leave 

 first together, and with them go the younger seals of both 

 sexes. The bulls and bachelors leave last, and on mild win- 

 ters probably never leave at all, as during several seasons 

 they have been seen about the islands throughout the whoje 

 winter. 



The great seal herd takes a wide sweep in the Pacific 

 ocean, their course tending in a southeasterly direction to- 

 ward the coast of Lower California. As spring begins to 

 come on they turn about and, following the coast of Oregon, 

 Washington, British Columbia and Alaska, come back again 

 by June to the Aleutian passes, and resume their places on 

 the rookeries. 



The American herd on the Pribilof Islands constitute a 

 distinct species, Callorhinus alascanus. Its fur is much 

 more valuable than that of the other species of fur seal. 

 On the Russian Islands, Komandorski, or Commander 

 Islands, Bering and Medni (Copper) Island, there is a 

 second species, Callorhinus ursinus, very much like the first, 

 with the same habits, but rather smaller, darker in color, 

 and with the neck and head more slender. Of these, there 

 are about half as many individuals as in the Pribilof herd, 

 and the number is similarly falling away, and for the same 

 reasons. More than half of all these are massed together 

 in the gigantic rookery called Severnoye, on the north end 

 of Bering Island. On the little island of Robben in the 



