No. II. MAMMALIA. 195 



4. URSUS MARITIMUS (Linn.) There is little to tempt 

 the Polar bear to leave the comparatively rich hunting-fields 

 of the north- water of Baffin's Bay for the dreary shores of 

 Smith Sound and northward. A single example was killed 

 near Bessels' Bay by Joe the Eskimo 1 in 1872, and footmarks 

 were observed by members of our expedition near Thank God 

 Harbour and in the neighbourhood of Cape Hayes. At the 

 present day I do not imagine the white bear ever enters the 

 Polar Basin through Eobeson Channel. The cranium of a 

 very large example was found by Captain Markham on the 

 northern shores of Grinnell Land in latitude 82 30' N., some 

 distance from present high-water level. I think it is not 

 improbable that this skull may have been washed out of the 

 post -pliocene deposits which fill up the valleys of that region 

 to an altitude of several hundred feet, and which contain the 

 remains of seal, musk-ox, and other animals, with abundance 

 of drift-wood, and the shells of most of the mollusca now 

 inhabiting the adjacent sea. If I am right in this surmise, 

 there is no saying from what distance or from what direction 

 this cranium may have been brought on an ice-raft. 



5. PHOCA HISPIDA (Schreb.) The ringed seal was met 

 with in most of the bays we entered during our passage up 

 and down Smith Sound. It was the only species seen north 

 of Cape Union, and which penetrates into the Polar Sea. 

 Lieutenant Aldrich, during his autumn sledging in 1875, 

 noticed a single example in a pool of water near Cape Joseph 

 Henry, and a party which I accompanied in September 

 1875, secured one in Dumbell Harbour, some miles north of 

 the winter-quarters of the ' Alert ; ' its stomach contained 

 remains of crustaceans and annelids. In June of the follow- 

 ing year I observed three or four of these animals on the ice 

 of Dumbell Harbour. They had made holes in the bay ice 

 that had formed in this protected inlet. The Polar pack was 

 at this time of the year still firmly wedged against the shores 

 of Grinnell Land, and so tightly packed in Robeson Channel 



1 Narr. 'Polaris,' North Polar Exp., p. 349. 

 o 2 



