THE POLAR ZONE. 9 



there is still the glorious aurora lighting up the heavens 

 and darting bright rays through the air, to make some 

 amends for the loss of sun and moon. 



Let us watch by this light that ambiguous-looking animal, 

 with his canine head and his fox-like tail, and listen to his 

 ambiguous voice too, between a dog-like bark and a fox- 

 like yelp, the Arctic Dog as he is called ;* even in the 

 severity of winter he prowls for his prey. The Keindeer 

 too braves the polar winter; and even in Spitzbergen we 

 may see him hard at work, with his monstrous branching 

 horns reaching backwards as far as his tail and forwards 

 beyond his nose, digging through the deep, hardened 

 snow, and turning it aside with his great, broad feet, in 

 search of the Cenomyce rangiferina, a Lichen which forms 

 his winter fare, and which, in honour of him, is called Rein- 

 deer Moss. 



But the long twilight steals on and on till towards the 

 end of March, when the sun's face appears once more above 

 the horizon; his slanting rays have yet however so little 

 power to warm, that till the middle of May the whole 

 country is still locked up in ice. But now the ice begins to 

 break up, and white bears and arctic dogs find themselves 



* Identical, as some suppose, with the silver-grey fox of North America. 



