1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 337 



3. Geographical Distribution of Greenlandic Mammalia. 



Similarity of physical contour and a general uniformity oi 

 climate, varying, no doubt, in degree, but still sufficiently inhos- 

 pitable throughout, with an abundance of the food on which all of 

 them subsist throughout the habitable tracks and in the sea wash- 

 ing the shores of Greenland, have failed, contrary to what might 

 have been expected, to produce a geographical distribution of the 

 Mammalia in a like universal manner, or at all corresponding to the 

 physical uniformity hinted at. It is only in the sea and on a narrow 

 strip of land skirting the shores of Greenland that animal life has 

 yet been found. The whole interior of the country appears to be 

 merely a frozen waste, overlain to a depth of many feet by a huge 

 vier de glace, extending, so far as yet known, over its entire extent 

 (with the exception of the strip named) from north to south — a 

 sea of freshwater ice whereon no creature lives, a death-like desert 

 with nought to relieve the eye, its silence enlivened by the sound or 

 sight of no breathing thing. This is the Inlands lis of the Danish 

 colonists ; the outer strip, with its mossy valleys and ice-plained hills, 

 is the well-remembered Fastland. Dreary, doubtless, it is to eyes 

 only schooled in the scenery of more southern lands; but, with its 

 covies of Ptarmigans flying up at your feet, with their whir\, the 

 arctic fox barking its hue, hue, on the rocks, and the Reindeer 

 browsing in the glens covered with the creeping birch (JSetula nana, 

 L.), the arctic willows (Salix herhaeea, L., S. arctiea. Pall., -S". 

 glauca, L., &c.), the crow-berry (Etnpetrum), the Vacciniums, and 

 the yellow poppies (Papaver nudicaule, L.), it is a place of life, 

 compared with the cheerless waste lying beyond. It is with it,, 

 therefore, and the sea circling around, that we have to deal. 



Many of the animals comprising the mammalian fauna, influ- 

 enced by no apparent physical cause, have but a limited geographi- 

 cal distribution, not extending south of a certain latitude, or nortli 

 of another, while other species have a range over the shores of the 

 frozen sea skirting three quarters of the world. Some species of 

 Seals are migratory, while others are not ; and the same is true of 

 various species of Cetacea. All of the terrestrial species proper are 

 indigenous all the year round, confined to the country by its insularity. 

 I have drawn up a Table (pp. 340 & 341) expressing at a glance 

 the degree and nature of their geographical distribution, local and 

 general. In this Table I have divided the distribution under three 

 main heads : — (1) general distribution over the range of the spe- 

 cies, (2) nature of its distribution in Greenland, and (3) its local 

 distribution in Greenland. I have, for the sake of convenience, 

 divided the general range of Greenland species into six subdivi- 

 sions, viz. : — (a) Circumpolar, comprehending the regions around 

 the most northern limits yet reached by man, the particular locality 

 within that region for each species being limited by the nature oi 

 its habitat ; thus the Bear occupies the shores or frequents the ice- 

 fields and the sea, the Seals the sea and the shore, or the ice-fields, 

 Proc. Zool. Soc— 1868, No. XXII. 



