R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 31 



one of his dogs escaped and could not be captured again. Three 

 years after, one severe winter, when " looking " his fox-traps, he 

 found the identical dog captured, much subdued by hunger, but 

 still very fierce after living for so long a period out of the reach 

 of the merciless lash. It served its master for many a day after in 

 harness. This man described the " Amarok " as all grey. It 

 has been supposed to be the Wolf ( Cards lupus, var. alba) * and 

 to have crossed over the ice in Smith's Sound ; but from what 

 I have said about the Eskimo Dog, it will be apparent that to 

 distinguish between a wild dog and a wolf is a matter of some 

 difficidty. I think, therefore, that the Wolverine has no place 

 in the Greenland fauna, and that the Kappik f and Amarok must 

 be regarded as synonyms of Canis familiaris, var. borealis, tinc- 

 tured with a deep hue of fable : Murray portrays the distri- 

 bution of the Glutton ( Gulo borealis) on both the east and west 

 coasts of Greenland up to nearly 67° N. lat. {op. cit. Map xxiv.) ; 

 but if I am right in excluding this animal from the Greenland 

 fauna, this distribution is erroneous. 



Here I may remark, what must by this time be self-evident, 

 that the Greenlanders cannot be relied upon (independently of 

 the principle in the abstract) for the names of animals. They are 

 not the excellent cetologists we have always been led to suppose, 

 confounding as they do several animals under one name, as I shall 

 have occasion to notice in a future page when discussing the errors 

 which Fabricius was led into by trusting too much to their no- 

 menclature, and which to this time have entangled the history of 

 the northern Cetacea in an almost inextricable knot. Fabricius has 

 notified in his Fauna many species of supposed Seals, &c. under 

 various Eskimo names, but which he was unable to decipher.J 

 Hr. Fleischer, Colonibestyrer of Jacobshavn, has aided me in 

 resolving these : — 



1. Siguktok, "having a long snout and a body similar to Phoea 

 grcenlandica perhaps P. ursinaP This is apparently some Eskimo 

 perversion, if interpreted properly ; for I am assured that it is 

 only the name of the Eider Duck {Somateria mollissima). 



2. Imab-ukullia, a Seal with a snow-white coat, *' the eye pre- 

 senting a red iris, probably P. leporina" is a rare albino of the 

 Netsik {JPagomys fcetidus). The meaning of the word is the 

 Sea-hare. 



3. Ataipiak or atarpek, "the smallest species of Seal, not ex- 

 ceeding the size of the hand, of a whitish colour, and a blackish 



* In the winter of 1868-9 a true Wolf was killed at Omenak, and was sup- 

 posed to have crossed from the western shores of Davis' Strait, where during 

 the same winter they were very ahundant. 



f Jansen in his " Elementarbog i Eskimoernes Sprog til Brug for Euro- 

 paeme ved Colonierne i Gronland" (Kjobenhavn, 1862); p. 55, translates 

 " Kappik " as " en GrsBvling," a badger. 



X See also Giesecke in his " Greenland," in Brewster's Edinburgh Ency- 

 clopaedia. This article, which is the only original one, as far as I know, ever 

 written upon Greenland in the English language, is a most trustworthy 

 account, for the time it was written. The author, however, copies Fabricius 

 in his errors as well as excellencies. 



