PREPARATIONS FOR WINTERING. 347 



amongst the ice, where pieces of algse were torn up, 

 they proved to be the large yellow-green Laminaria 

 phyllUls and the many -branching, greyish-green Desma- 

 restia aculeata, mostly uprooted by the walrus, and, when 

 rising to the surface, eventually frozen in. 



If the land presented all that was interesting to a 

 botanist, the zoologists found it quite the reverse. The 

 lower grade of animal life had, since the first regular night- 

 frosts (that is on land, for on the banks it froze much 

 sooner), run its course ; and of birds, most had taken their 

 departure ; still, on the 5th of October, we saw two snow- 

 buntings. The day after the great storm (October 10th) 

 we killed a ptarmigan at the foot of the Hasenberg in 

 full winter feather. Besides the ravens, which we saw 

 frequently, we were visited at the end of September by 

 some grey-backed sea-mews ; three hawks circled one 

 day round our ship, and once we saw a white eagle. 



The capture of a lemming ^ was interesting to us, one 

 of those insignificant rodentia, different species of which 

 are to be found in all Arctic countries. On the west 

 coast they are not yet known to any extent; from the 

 east coast one of these animals was brought by Scoresby. 

 They were lemmings which we saw on the 5th of August 

 while digging among the Esquimaux huts, though we 

 did not succeed in killing one. This specimen, the first 

 and the last we ever captured, was killed on the open 

 field running among the stones. A peculiar creature, in 

 its thick, unshaped head and body, without ears or tail, 



^ Myodes torquatus, Pall. "It cau only be classed as a very rare and 

 local (possibly accidental) member of the Fauna of Greenland, as it 

 Las never since being found in the country," — Proceedings of Zoological 

 Society of London, 18G8, p. 349. 



