MAMMALS OF JSTORTHERN CANADA 227 



ing with the Fox in the pack ice in 1868, at least 110 geogra- 

 phical miles from the nearest land. On the other hand, 

 Doctor Armstrong thought the meeting of an example over 

 one mile inland on Baring Island an interesting and most 

 unusual occurrence. Sir George ISTares' party secured sev- 

 eral specimens in 1875-76. General Greely obtained several. 

 He writes that they were very rare in Smith Sound 

 north of Cape Sabine. Lieutenant Lockwood, however, saw 

 a polar bear at Cape Benet, on the Greenland coast, in 

 latitude of 82° 24' north, which is the most northerly 

 record. Sir Edward Parry, in 1827, observed one on the 

 ice also in latitude 82° 24' north, to the north of Spitzbergen 

 Island. " On August 18, 1859, while almost becalmed off 

 Cape Bumey, a mother polar bear, with two interesting cubs 

 ajbout the size of very large d<^s, swam off to the Fox and 

 were all shot." 



McClintock says that the " veal " of the young appeared among 

 the delicacies of their table, and that Christian had asked him for 

 a portion of the old bear to carry home to his mother in Green- 

 land, where the flesh is considered a real delicacy. He further 

 says that he acquired the arctic acquisition of eating frozen bear's 

 blubber in very thin slices on biscuit, and vastly preferred it to 

 frozen pork. At the time of writing, however, he thought he could 

 not even taste it, but the same privation and sense of starvation 

 from cold, rather than hunger, which induced him to eat it then, 

 would doubtless enable him again to partake thereof very kindly, 

 if similarly " cooked by frost.'' 



PINNIPEDIA. 



Waxeus — Odobaenus rosmarus (Linnseus) and 0. ohesus 



(lUiger). 



Eifty years ago the walrus was numerous in the northern 

 seas between Point Barrow and Cape Bathurst and to the 

 eastward. On several of our overland bird and egg collect- 

 ing expeditions from 1862 to 1865 we observed a few 

 individuals basking in the sun on the pack, as well as on 

 large blocks of tide-swayed ice at the southern end of Prank- 



