74 



BOBEAL PROVINCE. 



Boreal provinces, and constituting, so far as Europe 

 is concerned, the westernmost boundary of both, 

 appears to present a fauna which is very closely 

 comparable with that of Finmark and Nordland. 

 The vaagmer, the tusk, the abundance of cat-fish 

 and lump- fish, the presence of herrings in consider- 

 able shoals, and of ling, skate, and halibut, is an 

 assemblage which gives a truly Boreal character to 

 its ichthyology, whilst the visits of the capelin 

 show how it passes into the Arctic province, further 

 indicated by the visits, few and far between, of the 

 Greenland whale. Fin-fish, bottle-nosed porpoises, 

 and seals, including the P. harbata, leporina, and 

 groenlandica, show a similar rule among the ma- 

 rine mammalia. A full account of its marine inver- 

 tebrata is a desideratum which we may look to the 

 able naturalists of Denmark to supply. Sir Wil- 

 liam Hooker was struck with the scarcity of shells 

 on the Iceland shores ; among the few he saw were 

 the Mya truncata and Venus islandica. Judging 

 from the list of Iceland sea-weeds given in the account 

 of the voyage of the "Recherche," there is, however, 

 in all probability a considerable population of 

 Mollusca, Crustacea, and Annellida, inhabiting the 

 Laminarian zone. 



The natural history of the Zetland Islands clearly 

 indicates their position within the Boreal province, 

 and their marine zoology is conspicuously of the 

 Norwegian type. This group of bare and barren 

 islands, so bare that the unique tree, some ten or 



