Notes on Birds and Mammals. 135 
would usually slip away under shelter of the large stone or 
rock near which he lay. When noticed, the sportsman 
should walk as if apparently passing by the hare, taking 
care not to look directly at him, but at the same time 
approaching, and when near enough, wheel round and fire ; 
for you must do with the hare as with the ptarmigan 
among the rocky hills of Scotland—take him any way; 
otherwise he is in a moment round the corner and safe. 
These hares seem to have puzzled the officers and crew 
of McClure’s ship in the Arctic,when he wintered in Prince 
of Wales sound. They were so numerous as to be seen in 
droves of hundreds at a time, yet only seven were killed in a 
month by the sportsmen, in a crew of about sixty persons. 
On a somewhat similar occasion, but with fewer hares, I 
shot ten in little more than an hour, and carried them to 
our snow hut, their average weight being about 8 lbs. each. 
Whilst walking one day in August along the shore of 
‘Victoria Land, latitude 69° north, the tide ebbing, I heard 
a clattering among the small limestone debris on the 
beach, which reminded me of a sound very common and 
often heard many years before in winter, on the shores of 
the Orkney islands. On cautiously looking over the bank, 
there, sure enough, I noticed a family of turnstones 
( Tringa interpres), two old and three young, busy turning over 
stones and feeding on the insects underneath. They looked 
so happy and were so fearless, that I had not the heart to 
shoot any of them for specimens. 
The American golden plover, commonly called the 
“ og-eye,’ must breed in immense numbers, at least as far 
north as 70° to 71°, as I saw large flocks of them flying to 
the south towards the end of August, when on the south- 
east corner of Victoria Land, on the shore of Victoria strait, 
in 1851, Great numbers of snow geese were at the same time 
noticed making their way apparently to Back’s Great Fish 
River, and thence probably to Great Slave and Athabasca 
Lakes, The Coppermine River is also one of the lines of flight 
of these birds, both in going to and returning from their 
breeding places. ‘They were very abundant in the autumn 
