376 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909 
trating into this gulf that the Belgica was able to reach the Green- 
land coast. 
Thus, as Nansen has described, and as also shown in the extracts 
of the journals of the Norwegian sealers published by Wollebaeck 
in a memoir by Hjort and Knipowitch, the regions of the bay ice— 
that is, the central region of the Greenland Sea—is the region sought 
out in the spring by the seals (Phoca greenlandica) as a breeding 
place, that find there an ice of slight thickness, always quiet, and 
; DP == 
ree 
=e ii 
600 
oF} 
700 ; i 
300 " / 
wit se ‘ 
ae ; 
1000 i 2 
\ f 
1100 : } 
1200 : - 
Sal alinity Salinity 
below 
on ER ee 
Fic. 4.—Temperature and salinity of polar current off west coast of Greenland 
little frequented by the white bears, all conditions such as can not 
be found either on the polar ice or near the coast 
cern themselves in their hunts mainly in the Gulf of Bay Ice, which 
they have learned to know very well. 
As has been seen, the ice of the central part of the Sea of Greenland 
é seen, 
is very characteristic and quite different from that of the polar cur- 
The sealers con- 
This curious distribution of the various kinds of ice is ex- 
rent. § 
plained completely by the study of the oceanographic materials 
brought back by the expedition of the Duc d’Orleans. 
