1 64 POLAR PROBLEMS 



literary and museological material to a great extent obsolete. This 

 condition is in full harmony with that set forth by Nansen as one of the 

 main reasons for undertaking a duplication of his drift in the Fram 

 across the Arctic Sea, viz. that newly invented instruments and meth- 

 ods necessitate a regathering of observations and specimens for the 

 verification or the correction of the old data. In addition, the older 

 material is defective because collected by disconnected expeditions 

 having other and, for the time at least, more important business 

 to attend to. 



If the zoogeographical problems are to be solved within a reason- 

 able time so as to be available as arguments in the discussion now going 

 on, they must be attacked according to a methodical and unified plan 

 somewhat on the order of the palearctic biological survey proposed to 

 the Carnegie Institution by Gerrit S. Miller and the present writer 

 more than twenty years ago.^^ In conjunction with the U. S. Biological 

 Survey such a plan, if carried out, would by this time have resulted in 

 an adequate circumpolar zoogeographical investigation. There would 

 have been gathered in one place under one head a body of material 

 from all the important localities surrounding the pole that would 

 have been sufficient for the purpose. As a matter of fact, what condi- 

 tions does the circumpolar zoogeographer face today? First, a fairly 

 good representation here in Washington of the American material 

 necessary for such a survey and, second, a considerable number of 

 miscellaneous specimens distributed among a dozen or more European 

 and American museums — material which, even if it could be brought 

 together in one place, would undoubtedly be found to require additional 

 collections to be of real use. I have already alluded (p. 158) to the 

 unsatisfactory status of the best of these cases, that of the banded 

 lemming (Dicrosionyx). For the sake of further illustration let me cite 

 the case of a conspicuous polar bird, the ptarmigan {Lagopus mutus). 

 Just as the earlier mammalian zoographers had only one or two forms 

 of the banded lemming to deal with, the earlier ornithologists recog- 

 nized at most four forms of Arctic ptarmigans. 



The latest general account of these arctic-alpine birds enumerates 

 no less than 19 named forms or subspecies. ^^ Since then several new 

 forms have been described, so that at present at least two dozen geo- 

 graphic modifications of Lagopus mutus have to be dealt with by the 

 next monographer. The material of these birds now in existence is 

 scattered among more than a dozen museums in the United States, 

 England, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, 

 etc. Moreover, it is safe to say that if all the specimens in all the 

 museums were brought together, the material, which should consist 



15 Leonhard Stejneger and G. S. Miller, Jr.: Plan for a Biological Survey of the Palearctic Region, 

 Carnegie Instn. Year Book No. i for 1902, Washington, 1903, pp. 240-266. 



1' Ernest Hartert: Die Vogel der Palaarktischen Fauna: Systematische Ubersicht der in Europa, 

 Nord-Asien und der Mittelmeerregion vorkommenden Vogel, Vol. 3, Berlin, 1921. 



