262 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



satisfaction of adding the long spiral horn of the 

 one, or the beautiful skin of the other, to our col- 

 lections. 



On a promontory of sandy beach near our an- 

 chorage there were always a lot of gulls resting, 

 and a small white fox, apparently half mad with 

 hunger, continued the whole day making unavail- 

 ing efforts to stalk them. He would go away for 

 half an hour until he thought the gulls might have 

 gone to sleep, and then come sneaking back to try 

 it again ; but the gulls were always too wide awake 

 for him. 



There are a great many foxes on this part of 

 Spitzbergen, and it is rather a curious subject to 

 speculate upon how they subsist in winter? All 

 the geese and eider-ducks, and I should imagine 

 also the gulls, leave Spitzbergen in September. 

 There are no hares or other small land animals, 

 and the occasional windfall of a dead deer or seal 

 can surely not maintain the foxes for seven or 

 eight months out of the twelve. Do they then 

 hibernate like the Norway bear, or lay up a secret 

 store of sea-fowl and eggs against the winter ? If 

 the latter, it is one of the most singular cases of in- 

 stinct sharpened by necessity to be found in nature. 



There are several well-developed raised beaches 

 around some parts of Ice Fiord. In one place I 

 observed three of these, each one about eight or ten 

 feet above the other. 



Nothing strikes a geological observer in Spitz- 



