SPITZBERGEN— BEAR ISLAND— JAN IVIEYEN. 



137 



Keilhau found growing near some Russian huts in Stans Foreland are during 

 the summer a precious resoui-ce foi- the reindeer, which, though extremely shy, 

 make their appearance from time to time in every part of the land from the 

 Seven Islands to South Cape, and are more abundant than could have been ex- 

 pected. The Polar bears are probably their only native enemies on these isl- 

 ands, and their fleetness furnishes them with ample means of escape from a 

 pursuer so clumsy on land. Lord Mulgrave's crew killed fifty deer on Vogel- 

 sang, a noted hunting-place, and on Sir Edward Parry's polar expedition about 

 seventy deer were shot in Treurenberg Bay by inexperienced deer-stalkers, and 

 without the aid of dogs. During the winter these large herbivora live on the 

 Icelandic moss which they scent under the snow, but it may well be asked where 

 they find shelter in a naked wilderness without a single tree. In May and 

 June they are so thin as scarcely to be eatable, but in July they begin to get 

 fat, and then their flesh would everywhere be reckoned a delicacy. 



Besides the reindeer, the only land-quadrupeds of Spitzbergen are the Polar 

 bear, the Arctic fox, and a small field-mouse, which in summer has a mottled, 

 and in winter a white fur. 



Of the birds, the hyperborean ptarmigan {Lagopus hyperhoreci)^ which 

 easily procures its food under the snow, undoubtedly winters in Spitzbergen, 

 and probably also the lesser red-pole, which perhaps finds grass seeds enough 

 for its subsistence during the long polar nights, while the snow-bunting {Plec- 

 trophanes nivalis)^ and the twenty species of water-fowl and waders that fre- 

 quent the shores of the high northern archipelago during the summer, all mi- 

 grate southward when the long summer's day verges to its end. 



Until very lately the Spitzbergen waters were supposed to be poor in fishes, 

 though the numerous finbacks, which towards the end of summer frequent the 

 southern and south-western coasts, and, unlike the large smooth-back whales, 

 chiefly live on herrings, as well as the troops of salmon-loving white dolphin 

 seen about the estuaries of the rivers, sufliciently proved the contrary, not to 

 mention the herds of seals, and the hosts of ichthyophagous sea-birds that breed 

 on every rocky ledge of the archipelago. Phipps and Scoresby mention only 

 three or four species of fishes occurring in the seas of Spitzbergen, Avhile the 

 Swedish naturalist Malmgren, the first who seems to have paid real attention to 

 this interesting branch of zoology, collected no les;^ than twenty-three species in 

 1861 and 1864. The northern shai-k {Scyonnus microcephalus) is so abundant 

 that of late its fishery has proved highly remunerative. The first ship which 

 was fitted out for this purpose in 1863 by Hilbert Pettersen, of Tromso, returned 

 from Bell and Ice Sounds with a full cargo of sharks' livers, and in 1865 the 

 same enterprising merchant sent out no less than five shark-ships to Spitzbergen. 

 The cod, the common herring, the shell-fish, the halibut have likewise been 

 caught in the waters of the archipelago, and there is every reason to believe 

 that their fishery, which has hitherto been entirely neglected, might be pursued 

 with great success. 



The mineral riches of Spitzbergen are, of course, but little known. Coal of 

 an excellent quality, which might easily be worked, as it nearly crops out on 

 the surface at a short distance from the sea, has, however, been discovered 



