150 K. E. von Baer's description of 



way be brought to eat the smallest root. Since^ therefore, 

 when they are at large they certainly devour the flowers only 

 and green parts, and since the plants of this country are all 

 perennial, in the following year they again put forth a stem. 

 I was still more surprised that when suffering the greatest 

 hunger they would touch no Cryptogamia. It is a pity that 

 the small number of ferns which have been found did not allow 

 us to make trial whether these practical vegetable physiolo- 

 gists direct themselves according to the presence of spiral ves- 

 sels or follow the divisions of the Linnaean system. There are 

 two kinds of them ; one seems to be Mus grcenlandicus, 

 Traill, or Mus hudsonius, Auct. They quite agree with the 

 description which Richardson gives in the ' Fauna Boreali- 

 Americana ;^ less with that of Pallas. The other species like- 

 wise appears to me distinct from the Scandinavian lemming ; 

 in the colour the difference is truly striking. Pallas, who how- 

 ever seems only to have seen young animals, has enumerated 

 it as a Russian variety of the Scandinavian lemming. The 

 first is particularly distinguished by its tameness, for, four- 

 and-twenty hours afler it had been caught, it hardly made any 

 attempt to escape when held free upon the hand, and one never 

 sees two individuals of this species quarrelling together. The 

 second, yellowish-brown species is much more ready to fight. 



Next to the lemmings the polar foxes are also tolerably nu- 

 merous. They find in the lemmings, in young birds, and in the 

 sea-animals which are thrown up on the shore, a plentiful sus- 

 tenance. 



On the contrary, polar bears are seldom seen in summer, 

 either because they avoid the places where they scent men, 

 or because they only collect together on those parts of the 

 coast where there is ice. The rein-deer also appear to have 

 become rare, on the western coast at least, from the numerous 

 winterings of late years of the seal-fishers. Not only were 

 very few killed during our residence, but one of the companies 

 which had passed the winter before in Nova Zembla, and had 

 been advised to procure a provision of flesh by hunting the 

 rein-deer, had not been able to obtain any. Wolves and com- 

 mon foxes, which, at least in the southern part of Nova Zem- 

 bla, also sometimes occur, appear never to have been numc- 



