80 R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 



dentibus exertis brevioribus loquuntur incolse, quam minus recte 

 (ut videtur) ad Phocas referunt, si non puUus rosmari, an animal 

 Dugong " (BufF. 205, 245. tab. Ivi). So that, after all, perhaps 

 the Auvekcejak was only the young of the Walrus ; and this 

 opinion I am on the whole inclined to acquiesce in. 



Fabricius enters in his "Fauna Groenlandica," under the 

 name of " 3Iustela gulo, L." ( Gulo boi-ealis^ Eetz.), an animal 

 which the natives talked about under the name of Kappik, 

 It was said to be found in south Greenland, among high moun- 

 tains, particularly beside streams, and was especially fond of 

 the hearts of reindeer. He considered it to be the well-known 

 Wolverine, the Jerf of Scandanavia (Norse Arv, Erv^ and Jcerv ; 

 Swedish Jerf, Gerf; Finnish Kamppi and Kamppi-Karhu). 

 If so, it must be exceedingly rare, for since his time no one has 

 been able to obtain or hear of a specimen. We more than sus- 

 pect, however, that here, as elsewhere, he was only reproducing 

 in a zoological dress the stories of the natives. So little was then 

 known of the zoology of the Arctic regions, that he might well 

 be excused for entering such animals in his fauna, there existing 

 no reason why they should not be found in Greenland. If Fa- 

 bricius could have lived to this day, he would have been the first 

 to erase these from his list. The reason why I think so is this : — 

 Under the head of " Ursus luscus " he has inserted a very doubtful 

 and problematical animal, talked of long before his day, and equally 

 so now, under the name of " Amarok " (" Ursus luscus, Eg., * De- 

 scription of Greenland,' Eng. transl., 33, Cr., * History of Green- 

 land,' Eng. transl., 99, ex descriptione pellis ejus. Cf. ' Continuation/ 

 287, ubi dicitur subfusca, forsitan etiam veterum Hyaena, Torf., 

 * Grcenlandia Antiqua, 82 "). This animal seems the same as that 

 which he indicated in his fauna under the name of ^' Mustela 

 gulo." He describes it as very fierce, corresponding in this 

 respect with the character of the Wolverine. Depending upon 

 the natives being in the habit of distinguishing animals by 

 different names very clearly, he considered that Amarok and Kap- 

 pik were different animals. Neither of them he appears to know 

 anything about. I found the Greenlanders talking to this day 

 about the Amarok all over Greenland ; and wonderful stories 

 they tell of its ferocity. It is the terror of the Greenlanders, as 

 Fabricius truly enough remarks ; everybody knew about it ; but 

 I could find nobody who had ever seen it.* Graah {Lib. cit. p. 90.) 

 found the natives of the east coast equally familiar with the name 

 of the Amarok ; the name Kappik, however, was unknown in 

 north Greenland. 



Finally, I discovered a man in Claushavn who declared he had 

 seen the Amarok; it hunted in packs, he said ; and this man made no 

 secret of his belief that it was only native dogs which had escaped 

 and returned to their wild state. In proof of this he told me that, 

 as frequently happens during the annual reindeer-hunting-season, 



* Mr. Tegner informs me that one of the natives declares that in July 1867 

 he saw the marks of the foot of an Amarok at the head of the Tessiursak, 

 an inlet near Claushavn. 



