Aug. 1859. GAME LISTS. 281 



nearly all drifted out again. The subjoined table will show 

 what game we have been able to obtain, by constant and 

 arduous labour from the resources of these regions during 

 two years' sojourn : also the game lists of most of the Arctic 

 Expeditions. The pursuit of game was perhaps more 

 systematically and perseveringly followed at Port Leopold, 

 and at Dealy Island, than at any other stations. 



The very small game list for Winter Harbour is accounted 

 for by the inexperience of all on. board the ships; and 

 compared with that for Dealy Island — -only forty miles from 

 it, and not in any way more favoured — furnishes a striking 

 contrast between the first winter and the last, which our 

 Government ships have ever passed in the arctic regions. 



At Port Kennedy several ermines were caught ; a few 

 seals were seen in the waterspace in Bellot Strait as early as 

 February ; only two dovekies were seen — one in summer 

 plumage, and the other in winter plumage. A few ptarmigan 

 and willow grouse remained all the winter ; many came 

 from the south in early spring, but all of them went north- 

 ward before April. During the four months occupied in 

 sailing from Davis' Strait to Bellot Strait, several hundreds 

 of looms and dovekies, and five or six bears, were shot. 



We had hoped to find musk oxen at Port Kennedy, but 

 were not so fortunate as even to see one of those most 

 interesting animals. Nothing in these dreary solitudes 

 brings home to one so forcibly the wonderful power of 

 adaptation which nature so frequently displays, as the first 

 sight of a herd of these tremendously shaggy little arctic 

 buffaloes, contentedly scraping away the snow, and browsing 

 such scanty vegetation as the soil affords. Their lips are so 

 flattened, and incisors so sharp, that they shave the frozen 

 ground more closely than sheep or goats could do. 



Nowhere have we found them more numerous than at 

 Melville Island, where 114 were shot during the twelve 



