Bibliographical Notices. 4i77 



grounds in Bear Island and Finmarken, and the gradual limitation 

 of the walrus to the banks and skerries north of Spitzbergen are 

 mentioned at page 1 7&, &c. 



The Ivory-gulls, greedy and rapacious, and ever fighting and 

 squabbling over their prey, are constant in their attendance on the 

 " flenzers " when stripping the skin and blubber from the carcases. 

 Gulls and guillemots get inexhaustible banquets on the Medusae 

 and Clios. Larus parasiticus and L. (/laucus have their tyrannical 

 and thievish habits described at p. 270. 



Gulls, fulmars, eider-ducks, and auks, occupying the islands as 

 breeding-places, are sadly vexed by the egg-eating propensity of the 

 white bear, whose other favourite sport seems to be seal-stalking, 

 whence apparently much of the vigilant wariness of the latter perse- 

 cuted animal, who is also continually alarmed by the loud booming 

 reports from the glaciers on some parts of the coast (p. 166). 



A good-conditioned full-sized male bear, upwards of 8 feet in 

 length, almost as much in circumference, and 4|- feet high at the 

 shoulder, will yield upwards of 400 lbs. of blubber, the carcase being 

 about 1200 lbs. ; his skin, though thin, weighs upwards of 100 lbs., 

 and is valued on account of its coat only. "The White Bear," says 

 Mr. Lamont, " as is well known, subsists principally on seals, and 

 he kills many of them on these sheets of ' fast ' ice ; but how he 

 manages to get within arm's length of them there, is beyond what I 

 can understand. When the seals are floating about on loose drift-ice, 

 bruin's ' little game ' is obvious enough ; he ' first finds his seal,' by 

 eyes and nose, — in the use of both of which organs U. maritimus is 

 unsurpassed by any wild animal whose acquaintance I have ever made, 

 — and then, slipping into the water half a mile or so to leeward of his 

 prey, he swims slowly and silently towards him, keeping very httle 

 of his head above water : on approaching the ice on which the seal 

 is lying, the bear slips along unseen under the edge of it [diving also, 

 if need be] until he is close under the hapless seal, when one jump 

 up, and one blow of his tremendous paw, generally settles the busi- 

 ness. The seal cannot go fast enough to escape by crossing to the 

 other side of the iceberg ; if he jumps down when the bear is close 

 to him, he does the best he can for his life ; for, if he does not jump 

 actually into the arms of his foe, and gets into the water, he is very 

 likely to escape, the bear having no chance whatever when the seal 

 is once fairly afloat. It cannot be very easy even for an animal of 

 such prodigious strength as the polar bear to keep hold of a six- 

 hundredweight seal during the first contortions of the latter, and a 

 furious struggle must often take place. That the seals often escape 

 from the grasp of the bear is certain, for we ourselves shot at least 

 half-a-dozen large seals which were deeply gashed and scored by the 

 claws of bears " (p. 107). 



It is stated that an old bear will kill the biggest bull-walrus, al- 

 though nearly three times its own weight, by suddenly springing on 

 him from behind some projecting ice, seizing him by the back of 

 his neck with his teeth, and battering in his skull with repeated 

 blows of his enormous fore paw (p. 122). The author met with 



