I 



248 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



the ocean— to the huge walrus and the vast mysti- 

 cetus with his congeners. All this life hangs to- 

 gether from link to link in a beautiful chain : thus 

 the different animalculae prey on one another ; the 

 shrimps and small fishes prey on the larger animal- 

 cule ; the seals and walruses and the numerous sea- 

 fowl prey on the shrimps and the fishes ; the bear 

 preys on the seal and the walrus, and the fox on 

 the sea-fowl. 



The Polar bear seems to me to be nothing more 

 than a variety of the bears inhabiting Northern 

 Europe, Asia, and America ; and it surely requires 

 no very great stretch of imagination to suppose 

 that this variety was originally created, not as we 

 see him now, but by individuals of Ursus arctos 

 in Siberia, who, finding their means of subsistence 

 running short, and pressed by hunger, ventured on 

 the ice and caught some seals. These individuals 

 would find that they could make a subsistence in 

 this way, and would take up their residence on the 

 shore, and gradually take to a life on the ice. 

 Polar bears in the present day are often carried on 

 the ice to Iceland, and even to within swimming 

 distance of Northern Norway, so there is no im- 

 possibility in supposing that the brown bears, who 

 by my theory were the progenitors of the present 

 white bears, were accidentally driven over to Green- 

 land and Spitzbergen by storms or currents. In- 

 dividual bears of U. arctos are found frequently of 

 a silvery gray color, and such bears are known in 



