370 Proceedings of the Royal 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 medusoe" 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 Eoss 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, MoUer, Hoeg, Olrik, 
Eink, Eeinhardt, Otto Torrell, &c. — may have met in with it, 
though I am not aware that it is on record. Disco-Fjord, a 
* Martens, tlie surgeon of a Hamburg whaler, in 1671, appears to have 
met with it in his " Voyage to Spitzbergen, t. F.f. JE.,'' though Phipps (Lord 
Mulgrave), in his Fauna of that sea, does not mention it : "Voyage to the 
North Pole ;" apud Scoresby, " Arctic Kegions ;" though it was afterwards 
got in Davy's Sound on the east coast of Greenland. — {Scoreshy's Voyage to 
Greenland, ^c. ; Zoological Appendix.) 
