60 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Ill -SEAL LIFE ON THE COMMANDER ISLANDS. 
HISTORICAL AND GENERAL. 
The northern Ihr-seal {Callotarm iirsina) was known to the natives of Kamchatka 
and the invading Eussian promyslileniks long before the islands to which they resort 
to breed were discovered. The seals were seen to arrive in spring, on their way north 
and east, and to return in autumn, and the correct conclusion was formed that the 
seals went to some unknown coast to bring forth their young. 
Tlie discovery of Bering Island revealed this unknown coast. Steller, the natu- 
ralist of Bering’s expedition, had a wliole spring season on the island in which to study 
their habits, and that he made good use of it is evidenced by the account he gave of 
these animals in his famous memoir, ‘‘De Bestiis Marinis,” published in 1751 in St. 
Petersburg.^ In this paper, writter in the Latin language and finished on Bering 
Island for publication, he established the salient points in the natural history of the 
fur-seal. Two. figures, one of a bull (fig. 1) and one of a female (fig. 2, pi. xv), prob- 
ably made by the artist Berckhan, as shown by Dr. E. Biichner (Mem. Ac. Imp. Sc. 
St.-Petersb. (7), xxxviii, Ko. 7, pp. 13-13), accompany the descriptions. Pig. 3, at 
least, is a fairly characteristic reiiresentation of a bull, and sui^erior to several figures 
published much later. 
Steller described in some detail the external and internal anatomy of the fur-seal, 
or sea-bear, as he called it, and gives a jiretty accurate account of their migrations 
and their habits on the island during the breeding season. He stated that they are 
polygamous, each bull having ‘‘8, 15 to 50 females”; describes the harems aud the 
bravery of the bulls fighting for the possession of the females; the birth of the one 
pup shortly after the arrival of the mothers; the nursing and the play of the pups; 
the long fast of the bulls on the rookery, etc. In fact, he covered nearly all the 
essential features of their lives. Later researches have made but few corrections, and 
the additions have been those of detail and elaboration. 
Such detail and elaboration was to some extent furnished by the venerable 
“apx)stle of the Aleuts,” Ivan Veniaminof, Avho gathered his information on St. Paul 
Island, Pribylof grou]), more than eighty years later than Steller. A very precise 
and concise account, both of the natural history of the animal and of the sealing 
business, communicated by Yeniamiuof to Admiral von Wrangell, then chief manager 
of the Eussian-American Company, was published in 1839 by the latter in the German 
language,^ aud was thus made easily accessible to the scientific world of his day. His 
somewhat more voluminous account in the Eussian language did not appear until the 
following year.-' He carefully distinguishes the various classes of seals — the sikatchi, 
or old bulls; the i)oluslk(itdti^ or young bvdls; the htdiistiaki, or bachelors; the matki, 
or mother seals; the kotiki, or pups, aud the yearlings. The sikatchi in spring arrive 
iirst on St. Paul Island, about A])ril 30 (old style; May 3 new style), ^‘even if the 
'Novi Comment. Acad. Sc. Imp. Petrop., n, pp. 289-398; pji. 331-359 relate entirely to the fur-seal. 
" Statistische uud Etlinojjraphisclie Nachricliten iiber die Russischen Besitzungeu an der Nord- 
westkiiste von Amerika. Gesammelt von deni ehemaligen Ohervorwalter dieser Besitzungen, Contre- 
Admiral v. Wrangell. St. Petersburg, 1839, 8'“ xxxviii -f 332 jip. aud niaxi; pp. 39-48 treat of the 
“ Seebiir. Phoca nisina.” 
"Zapiski ob Ostrovakb Unalasbkinskago Otdiela. St. Petersburg, 1840, 2 vols. 
