104 



HUNTING ADVENTURES. 



confined, than the animals of almost any other region. They 

 dwell, as it were, upon the very verge of the living world, beir.g 

 found as far to the north as the restless foot of human discovery 

 has penetrated ; and they are perhaps the only animals not de- 

 cidedly and habitually inhabitants of the sea, which are found in 

 every longitude, and are in all longitudes exactly the same. We 

 cannot say positively that they range across the pole of the earth's 

 rotation, and pass from Asia to America, and from America lo 

 Asia by that route, because there is a zone round the pole of 

 which we have no knowledge. But as the observations of the 

 recent voyagers for discovery in the Arctic regions, corroborated 

 by some other circumstances, lead us to conclude that the latitude 

 of the magnetic pole (or poles) has the maxium of cold, and that 

 the climate of the pole of rotation is not so severe, we may there- 

 fore suppose, without any violent straining of theory, that, in the 

 perpetual day which reigns there for a longer period than in the 

 limits of their habitation southward, the polar bears range over 

 the whole polar zone, till those confines where the sea is too clear 

 of ice for their habits ; and that they are thus the only animals 

 which have the command of all the meridians on the globe 



