168 Ohlin, Zoological observations during Peary Auxiliary Expedition 1894. 



others except a very few, are not dependent in their distribution on 

 the temperature of the water as formerly was believed by many 

 authors. In Baffin Bay or .Smith Sound we did not observe the 

 bottlenose. 



18. Beluga lencas. ,,Kaa-ja-gaktoo" (Esk.'). The whitewhales 

 seem to be very numerous in Inglefield Gulf and on the Greenland 

 side of Baffin Bay. Many times, when trying- to get through the ice 

 in Murchison Sound and Bowdoin Bay, we had the pleasant chance 

 to observe great shools containing, sometimes, surely a hundred indi- 

 viduals of this nice whale swimming 1 and blowing quite near the 

 vessel. The weather being fine I observed during- one week of August 

 nearly every evening- the ,,whitefishes u approaching- the shore. Young 

 and old ones were always going- in the same shool. I never heard 

 any sounds from it, as it is told by some authors. 



14. Monodon monoceros. ,,Kellelooah" (Esk.). I believe the 

 narwhale is also very abundant in Smith Sound and the ,,northwater" 

 of Baffin Bay as we procured narwhale-tusks in every Eskimo-settlement 

 we visited from Cape York to Inglefield Gulf. Several evenings in 

 August I saw here herds of this remarkable whale coming- close to 

 the ship showing but their marbled backs, but never their horns above 

 the water. Yet the shools did not contain so great a number as those 

 of the ,,belooga u , and they seemed to keep more separate from each 

 other. Like the whitewhales they were always to be seen in the 

 clear strips of water or leads" between the icefloes. Farther south 

 we did not meet with any. The narwhale, whitewhale and Greenland 

 whale are probably the only real circumpolar whales. The natives, 

 when asked about the function of the tusks, had* no opinion of that, 

 and none of the views I have seen hitherto about that matter, may 

 be regarded as satisfactory. 



Birds. 



Before enumerating the birds observed during the expedition 

 1 want to remark that the small number of birds belonging to the 

 land is to be accounted for by the rare opportunities we had to land, 

 as we were almost the whole time on board the vessel or making- 

 excursions on the ice. By Peary's companions a few small birds of 

 the orders Passeres and Grallatpr.es were described as living in the 

 vicinity of Inglefield Gulf. However I was not able to identify them 

 after that description: therefore I have enumerated here only the birds 

 observed by myself excluding those seen south of Cape Farewell, as 

 they belong to the Atlantic Ocean. 



1. Falco candicans. - I had the opportunity to see this magni- 

 ficent bird only in Godhavn the first week of September, when waiting 



