1886.] Zoology. 657 
The next navigator to explore these seas was Jacques Cartier, 
who arrived May roth, 1534, on the eastern coast of Newfound- 
nd. To this observing seaman we owe our first accounts of 
the home of the great auk or “ penguin” on the Island of Birds, 
now Funk or Fogo island, on the northeastern coast of New- 
foundland ; also of the Bird rocks of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 
' While harboring at what is now Funk island Cartier, after 
describing the great auks, tells us that he sawa white bear. In 
his own language, done into quaint English by Hakluyt: “And 
albeit the sayd Island be 14 leagues from the maineland, not- 
withstanding beares come swimming thither to eat of the sayd 
birds: and our men found'one there as great as any cow, and as 
white as any swan, who in their presence leapt into the sea, and 
upon Whitsun-monday (following our voyage towards the land) 
: we met her by the way, swimming toward land as swiftly as we 
could saile. So soone as we saw her, we pursued her with our 
boats, and by maine strength tooke her, whose flesh was as goode 
F to be eaten as the flesh of a calfe two yeres olde.” 
From this graphic and circumstantial account we feel sure that 
this was the great white or polar bear (Ursus maritimus); that it 
reached its full size, was not uncommon on the mainland (John 
Cabot says the land was “full” of them), and that it bred there, as 
those mentioned by Parmenius in 1583 were probably young ones. 
The white bear is still occasionally seen on this coast, as Rev. 
Mr. Harvey ‘states :! “The seal hunters occasionally encounter 
the white or polar bear on the ice off the coast, and sometimes 
it has been known to land.” 
Now, if in these early times of Cabot and Cartier the eastern 
- 
PU a Se a ee 
of Maine 
Our supposition is based on the following facts: In an ancient 
map of “ New France,” by the Italian Jacomo di Gastaldi, in about 
the year 1550, republished by Kohl, and which we here present 
of reduced size, what we should consider as veritable white bears 
are depicted as swimming in the ocean far from the coast of what 
must have been Nova Scotia, and near to but west of Sable 
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auae animals represented are bears admits of little doubt; 
M he four, Geuses the lowermost one iia seal; it is drawn with- — 
like Cars, while the three other figures have large, drooping ears, — 
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Í -t Halton and Harvey’s Newfoundland, Boston, 1883, p. 193. 
‘F 
r “Isola della rena.” In the map the bears are placed to -~ 
” those of a bear, At any rate, if the locality was put in at oe 
