THE NORTHERN TERMINATION OF GREENLAND. 71 



or extensive floes, would seem to show that there is no narrow strait 

 which would prevent the sea being cleared of ice in that direction. 

 Farragut Point, and the other headlands which figure dimly on the 

 map of the Polaris expedition, are probably capes of such islands. 

 Nowhere in the Arctic Ocean have we found great unbroken 

 stretches of land, and Greenland will most probably prove no 

 exception to the rule. That huge glaciers, like the Uumbold 

 glacier or those of Melville Bay, do not form the northern wall 

 appear to me almost certain from the following facts : High up on 

 the Greenland shore of Smith Sound we find the musk-ox (jOvSbos 

 mo.sehatus) ; but this large and essential Arctic mammal is perfectly 

 unknown south of Wolstenholme Sound. The glaciers south of 

 that point seem to have formed an impassable barrier to its further 

 progress, for the little difference in climate could have but a small 

 effect on its range. In the winter season any portion of Greenland 

 is sufficiently cold for it, and Smith's Sound in the summer is not 

 much colder than most of the other parts of the continent. There 

 must be, therefore, some physical cause for its being confined to that 

 portion of the Greenland coast. Now comes in another most remark- 

 able fact. On Shannon Island and the vicinity, in 74° n.l. (several 

 degrees southward of where it roams on the opposite coast), the 

 German Expedition to East Greenland found the musk-ox in great 

 abundance. Again, so far as we know, it is as perfectly unknown 

 on the south-eastern Greenland shores as it is on the south-western. 

 How did it come across, for across Greenland it must have come ? 

 It is an American animal, and is nowhere found in Arctic Europe 

 or Asia. It could not have travelled 700 or 800 miles across the 

 inland ice, for such a large animal, independently of other con- 

 siderations, requires a large quantity of food, which it could not 

 have obtained on that icy waste. It must necessarily have passed 

 over on dry land, where willows or other dwarf Arctic plants, on 

 which it subsists, could be found. It might easily travel short 

 distances on the frozen ice from island to island, and thus double 

 the northern termination of Greenland, and stretch down the east 

 coast for some distance, until again it met with an impassable 

 barrier to its southern progress. 



Take one further zoological illustration — and these illustrations, 

 though seemingly trivial in themselves, are yet of extreme zoo- 

 geographical interest — as tending to show that the Greenland land 

 must end not far north of latitude 82° or 83°. In L822, Scoresby 

 discovered a lemming near Scoresby'a Sound on the east coast, 

 which was named Mm GrreenlandicUS. It is now known fco be a 

 climatic variety of the European species, viz., Myodes torquatw, 



