40 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
The destructioQ of this luiuliug-groimd must be credited to the same parties 
who accomplislied the extermination of the sea-cow in twenty-seven years.^ 
At the i)resent day there are only two distinct rookeries on Bering Island, the 
principal one being located on the northern coast of the island, the other, a small 
affair, on the west coast. 
THE NOKTU ROOKERY. (Plato 7.) 
The great North Bookery (>S'erer?mye lezhhislUche) is sitaated on the northernmost 
pi'olongation of the island (Severni Mys; also called Cape Yushin) about 11 miles 
ii'om tlie main village, Nikolski, and about 10 miles from the northwest cape, Zapadni 
Mys. The north plateau of the island recedes here from the sea, leaving a broad, 
level tundra, which slopes gently northward toward the sea, ending abruptly in a 
steep escarpment, about 30 feet high, between which and the water a Oat beach, about 
400 feet wide, extends all around the point. 
From this beach a long, rocky reef, of volcanic origin, extends for half a mile 
nearly due north, ending in a somewhat isolated high rock, the so-called Sea-lion rock 
{SiruteJii Kamen). The terminal half of this reef is very low and, with the exception 
of the scattered larger rocks, under water at high tide; in fact, it requires very low 
water to be able to walk out to the Sea-lion rock. The basal half is formed by a 
slightly raised, long and narrow i)eninsula, about a quarter of a mile long by 400 feet 
wide, the central portion of which constitutes a hard, gravelly beach about 10 feet 
above mean tide, and gently sloping toward the water on both sides, and fringed, 
except at the base, by the rocky reef. The northern two-thirds of this gravelly 
central portion is covered with fragments of shells of mollusks and echinoderms, so 
that it appears quite white, ibr which reason this part of the rookery is often sitoken 
of as “tlie sands”; the basal third is covered with a very rank growth of Elymns 
molHs, continuous with the fields of the same grass which line the inner portion of tlie 
beach up to the escarpment. The vegetation is now gradually extending in a wedge- 
shaped point northward over the central part of “ the sands.” Several isolated 
rocks surround the rookery on both sides, as well as numerous sunken reefs. 
From the base of the i)roJecting point thus described, which is specifically desig- 
nated as the Beef Eookery Jezhhishtche), the coast trends east and is fringed 
with the same rocky reef as the rookery itself; but the seals do not haul up on these 
rocks, and they form no i>art of the rookery. The bay thus inclosed is comparatively 
shallow and sheltered, forming the principal playing-ground of the pups. Here they 
learn to swim. Near the south shore the rocks mark oft a series of shallow lagoons. 
From the western side of the “ Eeef Eookery,” the base of which is here marked 
off by a detached rock, called Bahm, or Babinski Kamen, the coast trends south- 
southeast. The beach shows the same characteristics, viz, an inner grass-covered belt, 
iollowed by a narrow, pebbly belt more or less w'hitened by lu'oken shells and fringed 
by an outer rocky reef, which by low water embraces innumerable very shallow lagoons. 
The grassy belt is widest (fully 400 feet) toward the reef, and the escarpment is 
here nearly obliterated by a little creek coming from the south. Its mouth is usually 
dammed up by the i^ebbles and gravel thrown up by the sea, and the grassy belt in this 
locality is therefore intersected by numerous connected pools of nearly stagnant water. 
^L. Stejiieger, How the Great Nortliorn Sea Cow {Eytina) Became Exterminated. American 
Naturalist, xxi, December, 1887, pp. 1047-1054. 
