Jaeger in flight. These relatives of the petrels are robbers, 

 predators, carrion feeders, and powerful fliers. 



Facing page: Numerous glaciers depend from the Greenland 

 icecap. If they reach the sea, their tongues fan out and float, 

 and great chunks break off, or are" calved," to form icebergs. 



The Arctic Tern, greatest traveler of all birds, flies the 

 Atlantic route 11,000 miles to the Antarctic in our autumn 

 and back again in our spring to nest in the American Arctic. 



considerable growth of lowly plants and many flowers above 

 which butterflies flutter and bumblebees buzz. There is even an 

 indigenous species of weasel that does not have an especially 

 thick coat or underfur. In summer it can be very hot there. The 

 reasons for this apparent reversal of what might be expected are 

 several. Lack of precipitation is one factor, the proximity of open 

 ocean is another, and the fact that what are called adiabatic 

 winds — consisting of great blankets of supercooled air that roll 

 outward off icecaps — are stopped by the elevation of the land 

 from reaching the coast in this area is a third. On the other 

 hand, there is a small icecap on Ellesmere Island; and the other 

 northern islands are bleak and dreary places, their northern 

 fringes covered for the most part all year round with incipient 

 icefields, ancient snow beds, or fresh snow. Otherwise the land 

 surface is truly barren ground, being mostly bare rock and 

 lacking even lichens. Yet there is life here, just as on the very 

 polar ice raft itself. 



WHITE ANIMALS OF THE FAR NORTH 



Under the ice raft there are various whales and seals, which 

 appear to be able to travel very considerable distances from 

 peripheral leads in its edge to holes and open spaces well within 

 its main body. Upon the ice there are polar bears, arctic foxes, 

 and gulls. The polar bears are the hunters and killers, the foxes 

 and gulls the scavengers, for there are no other animals avail- 

 able as live food. Bears, foxes, and gulls all come ashore and 

 travel considerable distances inland. When on land in the sum- 

 mer the bears feed on lemmings and any other small animals 

 that they can catch or dig up, and they eat great quantities of 

 berries and even some seaweed. 



The Polar Bear is one of the few really dangerous animals on 

 this planet. While you can walk through a pride of wild lions by 

 day without their doing more than turning their heads to look 

 at you, and while almost all other large animals will leave you 

 severely alone, polar bears may hunt you deliberately by either 

 day or night, on land, on the ice, or in the water. But polar bears 

 are more than just man-hunters; they are devilishly clever and 

 seem actually to use their brains, arriving at short-cuts to many 

 enterprises, having good memories, and, like cats, apparently 

 being able to correlate more than one set of facts and come up 

 with a third quite original plan. They scout around human 

 places of permanent occupation and not infrequently take delib- 

 erate pains to cover their tracks. A polar bear can travel at an 

 astonishing speed even on glaze ice which is as polished as a 

 mirror and more slippery, and with their sharp claws they can 

 climb the steepest ice pinnacle much faster than a man can. 

 However, there are cases on record of Eskimos having killed 

 polar bears singlehandedly with hand blades. 



There is continuing debate as to whether there are two dis- 

 tinct kinds or even species of polar bears — a small yellow one, 

 and a large pure white one. Some contend that these differences, 

 which may be very marked even in one locality, are merely 

 racial; others, that they are age groups; others, again, that they 

 are seasonal; and still others, that they develop in each individ- 

 ual due to the type of "country" — if we may call it that — which 

 it inhabits. Thus the big whites are said to inhabit the open 

 ocean, the floating pack ice, and the ice raft, whereas the small 

 yellow ones live along the coastal ice and travel inland in sum- 

 mer. Whatever be the answer, both kinds may sometimes be met 

 with far out on the open ocean; and an altogether bizarre sight 

 it is to be steaming along over a sparkling blue sea under a 

 cloudless sky with no sign of any ice anywhere and suddenly see 



