4 R. BROV/N ON TJIE 1\IAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 



land) have lielped us to a right understanding of that order. 

 Niisson has disentangled the northern Pinnipedia in his History 

 of Scandinavian Mammals*; and so lias Gray {libb. citt.) and, more 

 closely relating to Greenland, Fabricins,| in a supplementary 

 paper to his Fauna, and Dr. Wallace in the short abstract of one 

 read before the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh,! on those 

 killed by the northern seal-hunters. But nearly all of these 

 papers are only local, or relate merely to questions of specific 

 distinctions and synonyms, and touch but lightly upon the Seals 

 either as animals of Greenland, or on their migrations from one 

 part of the arctic regions to another. Our own arctic expeditions 

 halting little, if at all, on the Greenland coast, and many of 

 them unprovided with competent naturalists, have added almost 

 nothing to our knowledge of the arctic or Greenland Mammals ; 

 but the American expeditions to Smith's Sound, under Drs. 

 Kane § and Hayes, || have supplied us with many interesting 

 notes on the range and habits of species. I wish I could say 

 the same for all the describers of their collections. Professor 

 Cope^ has attempted to establish two " new " species of Beluga 

 from Hayes's collection ; but none of them (in my opinion) have 

 the slightest claims to specific distinction,** the supposed dif- 

 ferences being merely such as^ age or the ordinary variations 

 between one individual and another would produce. Lastly, in 

 the Scientific Section of the Narrative of the Second German 

 Expedition will be found some notes by Dr. Peters on the Mam- 

 mals collected on the East Coast. 



Other contributions to arctic mammalogy I shall have occasion 

 to notice as I proceed. 



2. Systematic Distribution of the Greenland Mammalian Fauna. 



As might be expected, the character of the Greenland mam- 

 malian fauna partakes of a sarcophagous type, the phytophagous 

 species proper being only three, and the marine species far ex- 

 ceeding in number the terrestrial species. In tlie nomenclature 

 of the Mammalia, though only a secondary matter, in a paper of 

 this nature, so long as they are correctly named, I have followed 

 some standard authority, without inquiring too strictly into the 

 soundness or priority of the specific names applied, or the value of 

 the tribal or generic divisions under whicli the writers have 

 classed them. 



This subject I may return to more critically at another time ; 

 but in this memoir I have allowed convenience of reference to 



* Skandinavisk Fauna, forsta Delen, Diiggadjuren, pp. 2G8-32G (1847), 

 also translated in Wiegmann's Archiv fiir Naturgeschichte, Bd. vii., &c, 



f Naturhistorisk Selskabets Skrivter, Bd. i. 



X Proceedings of the lloyal Physical Society of Edinb. 18G2-G3. 



§ Arctic Explorations, 2 vols. 1855. 



II Voyage towards the open Polar Sea (made in 1860), 18G7. 



\ Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, 1865, p. 278; 

 1869, pp. 23-31. 



** Prof Reinhardt, who, as Inspector of the Zoological IMuseum of Copen- 

 hagen, has every means of arriving at a determination from an examination 

 of a large number of skulls, writes to me that he has arrived at the same 

 opinion. 



