NO. 1405. MAMMALS OF NORTHWEST TERRITORIES— MACFARLANE. 731 



canoe.s, who had been directed to come there from Liverpool Bay to 

 meet and assist us collecting- birds, eggs, etc., and one or two young 

 men who accompanied us from Fort Anderson, we never saw an\^ other 

 representatives of this intelligent and interesting race in that quarter. 

 I thiidv the Greenland whale has l)een observed by all of the arctic 

 expeditions. Markham relates that the Nares shi})s of 1875-70 wit- 

 nessed numerous examples of the bottlenosed species near Davis 

 Strait, but as they do not yield much oil they are not in nmch request; 

 also one dead floating Greenland whale, worth .t'l,O0(). One of 

 Greel^-'s party found a rib of the latter as far north as latitude S2 33'. 

 Upon the east side of Fort Kennedy the bones of whales were found 

 in two places, a mile apart; the lowest was ISO feet and the hig-hest 

 300 feet above the sea. They were more or less l)uried upon a flat 

 patch of rather rich earth and nearl}" a mile inland. McClintock asks: 

 "When did the skeletons of these whales drift to their present posi- 

 tion 'i When did the forest trees grow in Baring's and Frince Fatrick's 

 Land, many of which are still lit for firewood !* And when were the 

 lofty table-lands of North Devon and North Somerset scored by the 

 immense ravines, broad and deep, with sides almost perpendicular, 

 and rocky beds, sometimes 100 yards wide, where no rivers now exist, 

 nor even streamlets, except during the few weeks of summer's thaw? 

 Will geology ever solve these enigmas 'i " 



NARWHAL. 



Monodon motioceros l^iniifviis. 



From Eskimo reports, as well as from the published accounts of 

 various exploratory expeditions, there can be no doubt that this 

 marine animal is at least sparingly present in almost every section of 

 the Alaskan and Canadian seas of Arctic America. Doctor Armstrong, 

 of the Investigator^ has noted some among the mammals observed by 

 him; Sir John Ross, Sir George Nares, and other explorers refer 

 thereto, while General Greely gives latitude 81"^ 35' north as its high- 

 est migratory range. Several skeletons and one tusk weighing about 

 l-t^ pounds and 7 feet 9^ inches in length were found on Boothia Felix 

 during the stay of Admiral Sir John Ross's party there from 18'21> to 

 1833, when they abandoned their ship and retreated by boat to Barrow 

 Strait, where they were rescued by a whaler, at one time commanded 

 by Ross himself. Doctor Armstrong, the accomplished surgeon and 

 naturalist of the Investigator^ has written that in the large western 

 islands (Baring and Melville), "where the soil is arenaceous, animal 

 life is more abundant than elsewhere; this gradually decreased as we 

 proceeded to the eastward, where the limestone formation generally 

 prevailed. But the greater number of bears, seals, walruses, and 

 sea fowl met with, although these are more difficult to procure than 



