I R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 



astonished if we find the fauna of Greenland, in the class Mam- 

 malia, burdened with species which have no existence save in the 

 vivid imagination of the Eskimo or the overlearned acuteness of 

 zoologists, and bereft of others which ought to take their place — 

 their history poisoned with fables only worthy of the belief of 

 the last century, and their geographical range in the country over 

 which they are distributed scarcely touched on, or wrongly de- 

 scribed. The accounts of the older writers on Greenland (Egede, 

 Saabye, Cranz, &c.) were very unsatisfactory ; but a new era in 

 the history of northern zoology dawned when Otho Fabricius, who 

 had passed several years in Greenland as a missionary, published 

 his '' Fauna Grcenlandica."* This work, far in advance of its age, 

 and which for the conciseness and accuracy of its descriptions has 

 rarely been surpassed, has most deservedly retained its place as 

 our standard authority on the zoology of Danish Greenland.f 

 Herein are enumerated thirty-one species of Mammalia indigenous 

 to the country, exclusive of man and those which have been 

 introduced by man's agency. Four of these species I have shown 

 in this memoir to have been entered upon imperfect grounds, one 

 was mistaken for another ( Ovibos moschatus for Bos grunniens)^ 

 and several are now known to be only synonyms of other species. 

 The species of Cetacea are, as might be expected, the most 

 obscurely described of all, and have occasioned much controversy ; 

 and the superabundance of literary acumen which has been spent 

 on these descriptions is more than the nature of them will allow of. 

 Subsequently the elder Reinhardt gave some notes on the 

 Greenland Mammalia in the '*• Isis " for 1 848, which, in the main, 

 are only a reproduction of the earlier account of Fabricius ; and 

 in 1857, the present Professor Reinhardt, of Copenhagen, in the 

 Appendix to Rink's " Gronland "J furnished a list of the species, 

 also following Fabricius. He has, hOwever, entered the only species 

 then added to the list, viz. Mus granilandicus of Traill, § discovered 

 by Scoresby on the east coast in 1822, under the name oi Hypudceus 

 groe,nlandicus\ and attempts to disentangle the specific history of 

 the amarok of the older authors, Fabricius's Gulo luscus, the 

 Phoca ursina, which Fabricius enters as a member of the Green- 

 land fauna, the Tricfiechus manatus, &c., and with some success, 

 though, not having visited Greenland himself, he is not so success- 

 ful as he otherwise might have been. This list, as all the others, 

 solely relates to Danish Greenland, extending from Cape Farewell 



* Hafnise et Lipsiae, 1780. 



f In 1867, whilst staying at Claushavn, I occupied as my study a little room 

 in the pastor's old house, now deserted and used to accommodate any stray 

 wayfaring men like myself. This was said to be the " dark closet " where 

 Fabricius wrought at his Fauna, Lexicon, and other works. It was afterwards 

 the residence of Saabye the grandson of Egede. who also wrote on Greenland. 



% Gronland geographisk og statistisk beskrevet, &c,, Band ii. Tillaeg 

 Nr. i. (Pattedyr, &c.). This appendix was also pubhshed separately, "Natur- 

 historiske Bidrag til en Beskrivelse af Gronland." 



§ Scoresby, •' Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery, &c." 

 Appendix, p. 459. 



Ii Prof. Reinhardt obligingly informs me (March 1868) that he is now 

 quite convinced that this is a My odes, though he only knows it from 

 description. 



