152 K. E. von Baer's description of 



Bjelucha or Bjeluga. Among the seals the sea-hare (Mor- 

 skoi sajaz), Phoca leporina, Lep^ Ph. albigena, Pall., but pro- 

 bably not distinct from the Phoca barhata of Fabricius, gives 

 the richest produce, both as regards its size and quantity of 

 fat, as well as its thick skin. Phoca groenlandica bears among 

 the Russians very different names, according to age and 

 sex : the old full-coloured male is called Luisan or Luisun ? 

 the female, Utjalga ; the not yet full-coloured animals, of a 

 year old, they call Sjarunok and Sjarka, and the young ones, 

 according to their different colours, Pljachanko, Choch- 

 lutschka, Bjaka. But they are not quite accurate in the ap- 

 plication of these names to the young animals, for they also 

 apply them to the young of a third species of seal which occurs 

 here, and which when full-grown is called Nerpa. This seal, 

 occurring everywhere singly on the coast, is probably Fabri- 

 cius's Phoca hispida, 



A fourth species of seal which belongs to these seas, though 

 not to the coast of Nova Zembla itself, but to the Timanic 

 coast and to the entrance of the White Sea, and even there 

 is not frequently seen, the Tewjak, is said to cover its face with 

 a cap : it is therefore probably the Klappmiits of the Dutch, or 

 Phoca cristata, Erxl., Cystophora borealis, Nilsson. 



Of Cetacea this sea contains in the first place a species of 

 whale of the subdivision of fin-fish (Baltjenoptera), with very 

 short whiskers, which I saw in Archangel. They rarely ap- 

 pear in the vicinity of Nova Zembla, and one never hears of 

 their being stranded on this coast. Nearer to the north coast 

 of Lapland, where they are almost yearly thrown on shore in 

 the Motowsker bay, they are so frequent that I much wonder 

 why the earlier attempts for the regular pursuit of this animal, 

 difficult it is true to slay, have not been renewed and perse- 

 veringly carried on. It is worthy of remark that the Green- 

 land whale never ^appears to stray into the district of Nova 

 Zembla. For this reason we must believe that the whale- 

 fishery which the Northmen carried on, according to Ohthere's 

 testimony*, in the ninth century, in the neighbourhood of the 

 North Cape, was for this very fin-fish. Far more rare is the 



* See King Alfred's Translation of Orosiiis, cd. Barrington, p. 241, For- 

 ster's note at the end. 



