10 R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 



it is to eyes only schooled in the scenery of more southern lands ; 

 but, with its covies of ptarmigans flying up at your feet, with their 

 whir /, the arctic fox barking its hue, hue, on the rocks, and the 

 reindeer browsing in the glens covered with the creeping birch 

 {Betula 7ia7iaf'L.)f the arctic willows (^Salix herbacea^ L., S. aretiea 

 Pall., S. glauca, L., &c.), the crow-berry {Empetruiii), the Vacci- 

 niums, and the yellow poppies {Papaver nudieaule, L.), it is a 

 place of life compared with the cheerless waste lying beyond. It 

 is with it, therefore, and the sea circling around, that we have to 

 deal.* 



Many of the animals constituting the mammalian fauna, influenced 

 by no apparent physical cause, have but a limited geographical dis- 

 tribution, not extending south of a certain latitude, or north of 

 another, while other species have a range over the shores of the 

 frozen sea skirting three-quarters of the world. Some species of 

 Seals are migratory, while others are not ; and the same is true of 

 various species of Cetacea. All of the terrestrial species proper are 

 indigenous all the year round, confined to the country by its 

 insularity. I have drawn up a table (pp. 8, 9) expressing at 

 a glance the degree and nature of their geographical distribution, 

 local and general. In this table I have divided the distribution 

 under three main heads : — (1) general distribution over the range 

 of the species, (2) nature of its distribution in Greenland, and (3) 

 its local distribution in Greenland. I have, for the sake of con- 

 venience, divided the general range of Greenland species into six 

 subdivisions, viz. ; — (a) Circumpolar, comprehending the regions 

 around the most northern limits yet reached by man, the particular 

 locality within that region for each species being limited by the 

 nature of its habitat ; thus the Bear occupies the shores or frequents 

 the ice-fields and the sea, the Seals the sea and the shore, or the 

 ice-fields, the Dog the vicinity of man's dwellings, and the Hare the 

 land generally, while the Fox keeps more by the shore, but not in 

 the sea, and rarely ventures out on the ice fields ; (/3) Circumarctic 

 America and (7) Circumarctic Europe comprehend all the region 

 about Greenland and south of the head of Baffin's Bay, down 

 Davis's Strait, and other places southof the former limits, Hudson's 

 Bay, Labrador, &c., on the one hand, and on the other the Icelandic 

 seas and shores, the regions of Europe generally within or about 

 the arctic circle. It may be called also subpolar, and has been 

 formed to take in the distribution of some species of Seals and 

 Cetacea. The two regions are about the same in zoo-geography. 



(S) Circumarctic Asia comprehends similar limits on the Asiatic 

 continent, and is made to take in the range of the Fox, Lemming, 

 and a few other animals, which extend their range so far east and 

 Avest. I have not thought fit to create in this table an Aretie 



* For a further description of the character of the inland ice, &c., the 

 reader is referred to the following papers by the writer of these notes : — 



" Das Innere von Gronland," retermann's Geographische Mittheilungen, 

 1871 ; "The Physics of Arctic Ice," Quart, Journ. Geol. Soc, 1871 ; "Geo- 

 logy of the Noursoak Peninsula, etc.," Trans. Geol. Soc, Glasg., vol. v. ; 

 "Disco Bay," The Geographical Magazine, Feb. 1875, and in my section of 

 The Arctic Manual of The Royal Geographical Society, now in preparation. 



I 



