Mr. A. Newton on the Zoology of Spitsbergen. 427 



or at any rate at no great distance from land ; the latter is known as 

 " Stor Kobbe," Great Seal, or less frequently " Blaa Kobbe," Blue 

 Seal. How this last name came to be applied to it I do not know. 

 As far as I can judge, it is very inappropriate. When dry, its fur is 

 of a dirty yellowish white ; and a beast of this species lying on a 

 floe has exactly the appearance of a lump of discoloured ice, so that 

 the hunter often takes one for the other. In the water it seems to 

 be much of the same colour as most Seals — a dark iron-grey above, 

 lighter beneath. It is a very powerful animal : I saw one that had 

 received three Enfield-bullets through the nape of its neck, and had 

 been bleeding profusely for about half an hour ; yet it nearly suc- 

 ceeded in capsizing a large whale-boat with five men in her, owing 

 to the clumsiness of the harpooner. We constantly saw this species 

 at a considerable distance from land — ten to twenty miles, off the west 

 coast of Spitsbergen, mostly between Bell Sound and Ice Fjord ; and 

 a young male of the previous year was shot from the deck of the 

 yacht, and afterwards harpooned, on the 29th July, about fifteen 

 miles from South Cape. 



We saw no other mammals in Ice Fjord. Our pilot pointed out 

 to me one day a place where, many years ago, a jcegfs crew, of 

 which he himself was one, killed nine Polar Bears ; but no such 

 good fortune attended us. This same man informed me that he 

 knew of the occurrence in Spitsbergen of a " Hermelin," a species 

 which has not hitherto been recorded from that country, though it 

 is probable that the " creature, somewhat larger than a weasel, with 

 short ears, long tail, and skin spotted white and black," stated to 

 have been seen on Low Island by Dr. Irving in Lord Mulgrave's 

 Voyage*, was nothing else but Mustela erminea. 



I must here mention the pleasure it was to me, and, I am sure, to all 

 the other members of our party, to fall in with the Swedish Scientific 

 Expedition, who are engaged in making a series of preliminary sur- 

 veys, preparatory to measuring an arc of the meridian, in Spitsbergen. 

 To Professors Nordenskjold and Duner and Mr. Malmgren our best 

 thanks are due for their kindness in furnishing us with much valu- 

 able information, the results of their former arduous explorations in 

 this distant country. 



On leaving England there had been two points in the ornithology 

 of Spitsbergen to which I had especially meant to apply myself. The 

 first was the obtaining of a good series of specimens of the Spits- 

 bergen Lagopus, a single example of which, brought from that 

 country in 1855 by my friends Mr. W. Sturge and the late Mr. E. 

 Evans, had been described by Mr. Gould in our ' Proceedings ' for 

 1858 (p. 354) as a distinct species under the name of L. hemileucu- 

 rus ; the second was the determination of the large species of Wild 

 Goose, which the same gentlemen found breeding on the shores of Ice 

 Fjord (Ibis, 1859, pp. 1/1, 172). Of the latter, as I have already 

 mentioned, we saw a considerable number ; and though we failed in 

 our efforts to obtain a specimen, yet, through Mr. Malmgren's kind- 



* ' A Voyage towards the North Pole undertaken by His Majesty's command, 

 1773.' By Constantine John Phipps. London: 1774, page 58. 



28* 



