350 MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. [May 28, 



they saw nothing of it, and it may be safely said not to be an in- 

 habitant of the west coast, either within or outside of the Danish 

 possessions. 



From Upernavik southward, the Danes have been on the coast, 

 either settled or trading, for at least 120 years, and during that time 

 not a few collectors have visited the country ; but, notwithstanding 

 all their exertions and those of the stationary officers of the govern- 

 ment there, no specimen of this Mouse has as yet been obtained, nor 

 do the Eskimo know of the existence of such. Murray has therefore 

 taken too wide a generalization, when he portrays, on map Ixxxv. 

 of his laborious and generally accurate work the ' G-eographical 

 Distribution of Mammals' (1866), p. 267, the distribution of the 

 Lemming as extending right along the east and western shores of 

 Greenland to the head of Baffin's Bay, on the supposition that it is a 

 regular member of the Grreenland fauna. I am inclined to look 

 upon it as representing the extreme eastern limit of the Myodes tor- 

 quatus, as the Myodes hudsonius is a climatic species representing the 

 extreme ivestern range of the former species. It is almost unneces- 

 sary to note, after what I have said, that Fabricius makes no men- 

 tion of it in his ' Fauna Grcenlandica ;' and if it had been found, he, 

 ever anxious as he was to add anything to the Greenland Mammals, 

 would have been sure to have heard of it from the natives, credence 

 in whose mythical zoology forms one of the few disfigurations of his 

 work. Neither did Ingelfield, Sutherland, Kane, or Hayes see any- 

 thing of it in Smith's Sound, or southward to the northern limits of 

 the Danish possessions. 



In 1861, the natives at Pond's Bay, on the western shore of Davis's 

 Strait, brought me many skins of this species, which I ascertained 

 to belong to the hudsotiius form. For the sake of reference, the 

 Arctic species may be classed as follows : — 



Myodes xoRauAxus, Pall. 

 Var. hudsonius, Forst. 

 Var. grmlandicus, Tr. 



6. [Mus DECUMANUS, Pall. (1778). 



Mus norvegicus, Erxleben (1776). 



Grcenl. Teriak. 



The brown Rat was introduced as far back as the days of Fabri- 

 cius by the Danish ships in the summer, and seemed likely to prove 

 dangerous in houses ; but they gradually and periodically died out, as 

 they could not stand the cold of the winter. Some years ago they 

 were again introduced, and still occasionally one is seen in the 

 summer months in some of the warehouses from Upernavik to near 

 Cape Farewell.] 



7. [Mus MuscuLXJS, Linn. 



Grcenl. Teriangoak ("the small Rat"). 



Its history as a colonist animal in Greenland is about the same as 



