370 Proceedings of the Boyal Physical Society. 



works on the country, does not appear, though in none of 

 them can I find any account of this animal. The Chevalier 

 Charles Louis Giesecke, who passed several years in Green- 

 land, engaged in the study of its Natural History, in his 

 article " Greenland," in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, vol. x. 

 p. 502, notes as follows : — " In Disco-Fiord is found the 

 Asterius caput medusae." He is apparently here, as in many 

 other places, only copying the doubtful record of its occur- 

 rence by Fabricius. 



There is no notice of it in Hans Egede's work on Greenland 

 {Die Gcemle Groenland nye Perlustration, 1729) ; or in the 

 fuller and better work by David Crantz, one of the Mora- 

 vian Unitas Fratrum {Historie von Gronland, 1765 ; English 

 trans. 2 vols. 1820), both of whom studied very closely the 

 Arctic Fauna with the best lights of the age. My attention 

 has however been called to a note by Mr Gwyn Jeffreys, in 

 the " Annals of Natural History," vol. vii. p. 253, where he 

 refers to Sir John Eoss having got a single specimen far 

 north, which was described by Dr Leach, under the synonym 

 of Gorgonocephalus arcticus, and is now in the British Mu- 

 seum. It was obtained from 1600 fathoms soundings in soft 

 mud, and measured, when expanded, two feet.* 



My specimen is much larger and finer than any I have 

 ever seen got in the British seas. It thus appears that, with 

 the exception of the doubtful indication of its occurrence in 

 Disco Fjord, by Fabricius (circiter 1760), and that by Sir 

 John Boss in 1819, this specimen found last year is only the 

 third got in the wide Arctic sea, north and west of Greenland. 

 None of the Government exploring expeditions have brought 

 it home, though it is quite possible that some of the many 

 naturalists who have studied the Arctic fauna since the days 

 of Fabricius — Eschricht, Staeger, Kroyer, Moller, Hoeg, Olrik, 

 Bink, Beinhardt, Otto Torrell, &c. — may have met in with it, 

 though I am not aware that it is on record. Disco-Fjord, a 



* Martens, the surgeon of a Hamburg whaler, in 1671, appears to have 

 met with it in his " Voyage to Spitzbergen, t. P.f. E." though Phipps (Lord 

 Mulgrave), in his Fauna of that sea, does not mention it : "Voyage to the 

 North Pole ;" apud Scoresby, " Arctic Eegions ;" though it was afterwards 

 got in Davy's Sound on the east coast of Greenland. — {Scoresby s Voyage to 

 Greenland, $c. ; Zoological Appendix.) 



