Photographs by Capt. Jackson. 
LOONS WITH YOUNG MIGRATING SOUTH. 
ARCTIC ANIMALS. 
By Captain FREDERICK G. JACKSON, F.Z.S. 
(Leader of the Jackson-Harmsworth Polar Hxpedition.) 
HERE is a popular impression that animal life is 
chiefly remarkable for its absence in the Polar 
Regions. This is perfectly true with regard to many 
vast frozen tracts within the Arctic Circle and the 
dreary wastes of floe-ice reaching towards the Pole. On 
the other hand, there are many more favoured localities 
literally teeming with life, to which the Little Auk, 
Guillimot, and Kittiwake return in the spring, after the 
long, death-like Arctic winter, to bask im the warming 
sunshine of the returning daylight and to bring forth 
their young. 
The spots which birds frequent are usually southerly- 
facing rocks on a coast line, which rise above the glacier 
ice and stand sentinel-like at imtervals overlooking the 
frozen sea beneath them. Here, as the darkness lightens 
and the first rosy blush of a returning sun appears over 
the desolate landscape after the four months of continuous 
darkness, the Dovekie first wings its flight from the 
more favoured lands of the south, followed in a few 
days by the Loon or Arctic Guillimot, Rotge or Little 
Auk, and later still by the IKittiwake. 
The Polar Bear, Walrus and Seal are always with 
us, summer and winter, and depend only upon a limited 
amount of open water and the presence of food for their 
well-being. The bear least of all requires much water, 
for wherever the seal can find breathing space by keeping 
its blow-hole open, there also will the polar bear be found 
‘mm search of his dinner. The walrus too will, in the 
localities he frequents, ive summer and winter if the 
conditions, such as strong currents and high gales, favour 
the formation of thin ice. 
I have been asked in this article to give a short 
account of the commoner Arctic animals which I came 
157 
IVORY GULL’S EGGS AND NEST. 
NESTING ON 
KITTIWAKES AND LOONS 
CAPE FLORA. 
