Lemming — Narwhal. 61 



ly authentic. Finally, it is also desirable that there should 

 be obtained a series of the different varieties of age in this 

 animal, or at least a male and female, with one of the young. 



The migrations of the lemming, their irregularity, every 

 thing referring to the circumstances in ^vhich they take place, 

 ought also to become the subject of a new examination, and 

 too much care cannot be bestowed upon it. The more inte- 

 resting these facts, are to science, the more necessary it is to 

 subject them to a rigorous examination. We particularly re- 

 commend to the zoologists of the expedition to make new ob- 

 servations on the du'ection of their migrations, which, accord- 

 ing to authors most worthy of confidence, sometimes take 

 place, on the approach of winter, from south to north ; for 

 example, in 1742, a year in which the winter was most rigor- 

 ous in the more southern provinces. It is owing to these facts, 

 as is well known, that the lemmings have the credit of enjoy- 

 ing the faculty, to us absolutely incomprehensible, of foreseeing 

 severe winters ; an instinct which has, in like manner, been 

 ascribed to other gnawers, and to a great number of migi-atory 

 birds. 



Among the mammifera, we have further to recommend, and 

 with the more interest because, in this case, it is not only in- 

 formation regarding the animals, but the animals themselves, 

 that we want, or of which we scarcely know anything, — \st, 

 The narwhal, whose singular and gigantic weapons of de- 

 fence are so common in collections, and of which we even pos- 

 sess a few broken crania, but whose skin (unless it may per- 

 haps exist in an old collection of natural history at Hamburgh) 

 and skeleton, are wanting in all the museums of Europe. 

 Either the one or the other of these is one of the finest objects 

 which the expedition coidd procure. In want of them, the pos- 

 session of the viscera, a well preserved cranium along with a 

 task, crania, although broken, with two tusks, Avould be of great 

 benefit to science. The narwhal does not appear to be rare 

 in the Icy Sea between Greenland, Spitzbergen, and the North 

 Cape ; that is to say, precisely that part of the Arctic ocean 

 which the expedition will traverse, if it repair to Spitzbergen ; 

 and, it may be added, the animal is stranded at times on the 

 coasts of these different countries. The exj)e(l,ition \vill, doubt- 



