K. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 21 



in the country ; Graah* did not eee it in his two years' journey, 

 nor even hear of its existence. No doubt the east coast of Green- 

 land is almost unapproachable for ice, and has never been visited 

 since Graah's day, except for a little way round Cape Farewell. 

 Whalers, however, have been known to have landed near Scoresby's 

 Sound ; but they saw nothing of it, and it may be safely said not 

 to be an inhabitant of the west coast, either within or outside of 

 the Danish possessions. 



From Upernavik southward, the Danes have been on the coast, 

 either settled or trading, for at least 120 years, and during that 

 time not a few collectors have visited the country ; but, notwith- 

 standing all their exertions and those of the stationary officers of 

 the government there, no specimen of this Mouse has as yet been 

 obtained, nor do the Eskimo know of the existence of such. 

 Murray has therefore taken too wide a generalization, when he 

 portrays, on map Ixxxv. of his laborious and generally accurate 

 work the " Geographical Distribution of Mammals " (18(56), p. 267, 

 the distribution of the Lemming as extending right along the east 

 and western shores of Greenland to the head of Baffin's Bay, on 

 the supposition that it is a regular member of the Greenland fauna. 

 I am inclined to look upon it as representing the extreme eastern 

 limit of the Myodes torquatus^ as the My odes hudsonius is a climatic 

 species representing the extreme ic ester n range of the former 

 species. It is almost unnecessary to note, after what I have said, 

 that Fabricius makes no mention of it in his '•' Fauna Groenlandica ;" 

 and if it had been found, he, ever anxious as he was to add anything 

 to the Greenland Mammals, would have been sure to have heard 

 of it from the natives, credence in whose mythical zoology forms 

 one of the few disfigurations of his work. Neither did Inglefield, 

 Sutherland, Kane, or Hayes see anything of it in Smith's Sound, 

 or southward to the northern limits of the Danish possessions.f 



In 1861, the natives at Pond's Bay, on the western shore of 

 Davis's Strait, brought me many skins of this species, which I 

 ascertained to belong to the hudsonius form. For the sake of 

 reference, the Arctic sjpecies may be classed as follows : — 



Myodes torquatus, Pall. 



Var. hudsonius^ Forst. 

 Var. grcenlmidicus, Tr. 



6. [Mus DECUMANUS, Pall. (1778). 



Mus norvegicus, Erxleben (1776). 

 Greenl. Teriak. 



The Brown Rat was introduced as far back as the days of Fabri- 

 cius by the Danish ships in the summer, and seemed likely to 



* Narrative of an expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, Engl, transl. 

 (1837); the original Danish edition is in 4to. Undersogelses-Reise til Ost- 

 kysten af Gronland, 1832. 



t These remarks (written in 1868) now (1875) require considerable modi- 

 fication. The German Expedition got it on the east coast, on Sabine's Island, 

 in 1869-70. The American Expedition under Hall met with it in Smith's 

 Sound. 



