Mr. A. Newton on the Zoology of Spitsbergen. 425 



breeding around Ice Sound, indeed, I may say, in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of Safe Haven, a commodious inlet on its northern 

 shore, where the yacht dropped her anchor on the morning of the 

 9th July. 



The whole of the next week was employed by our party in explor- 

 ing, with different objects in view, the shores of the Sound, or, as it 

 should be more properly called, fjord, for it extends at least fifty 

 miles into the interior, and appears to have no connexion with Wi- 

 belan's Water or any other inlet of importance. Almost every de- 

 pression on its northern side is occupied by a glacier, which generally 

 fills it nearly to the brim, and, with but one exception, these glaciers 

 are only terminated by the sea ; but along its southern shore are 

 some four or five bays of various sizes, and between them various 

 valleys which, being quite free from ice, are more or less fertile 

 and afford sufficient pasturage for numerous herds of Rangifer ta- 

 randus. These Deer are tolerably abundant : they are certainly 

 smaller than the Lapland Reins, whether wild or tame ; and though 

 I can hardly profess to speak generally on the subject, yet all the 

 antlers which I saw in Spitsbergen seemed to me to be slighter in 

 the beam than those of the continental race ; nevertheless, the points 

 being in old stags considerably elongated, the expanse of antler was 

 not much inferior. The average type of a good Spitsbergen head is 

 very well represented by the first figure in the ' Fauna Boreali-Ame- 

 ricana' (vol. i. p. 240), of the so-called Barren-ground Caribou 

 (Cervits tarandus, var. a. arctica, Richardson) ; and it is probable 

 that the same causes which influence the development of the antlers 

 in the Rein-Deer of the mauvaises terres in North America affect 

 in like manner those of their Spitsbergen brethren. These last are 

 said, by persons who have wintered there, not to migrate from the 

 country ; at least they or their tracks on the snow are seen " as soon 

 as it begins to get light " in spring. At the same time it is just 

 possible that some of them may wander over the frozen sea by way 

 of Giles Land, and other islands, perhaps, of which we have as 

 yet no knowledge, to Nova Zembla, and so on to the country of the 

 Samoides. Certainly a hind killed by my friend Mr. Graham Man- 

 ners- Sutton had one ear slit in a manner which was recognized by 

 some of the 'Semmoline's ' crew (most of them Qusens) as a mark 

 of ownership. I must, however, add that, averse as I am to doubt 

 the technical knowledge of an expert, the slit in question seemed to 

 me as if it might have been very well caused by another deer in fight- 

 ing, or, even if it were of human origin, such as might have been 

 made by some one who had caught the animal when a calf, and let it 

 go again ; but this last solution of the difficulty excited a laugh at 

 my simplicity among the Queens, who could not conceive it possible 

 that a hungry hunter should show compassion towards the very 

 youngest deer. All that we saw the first week of our being in the 

 country still retained a considerable quantity of their nearly white 

 winter clothing, thus rendering their detection, when viewed against 

 the dark-coloured ground, a very easy matter even at a great distance. 

 These animals also were in poor condition, contrasting in this respect 

 Ann. $ Mag. N. Hist. Ser.3. Vol.xv. 28 



