THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION : ITS SCIENTIFIC AIMS. 
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Arctic zoology some interest, and yield results which science 
will not despise. The fishes of the Arctic seas, as the discoveries 
of late years have shown, are not 44 worked out,” and the fresh- 
water species of the North will he of extreme interest. Let 
us only take one or two points as illustrating what may be yet 
done in even the higher groups. One might suppose that, 
after the Danes had lived in Greenland for 150 years, there were 
not many new mammals to discover in that country. But we 
have seen, by the discovery within the last few years, of three 
land mammals previously unknown to the fauna, that this is not 
the case. Take the musk ox ( Ovibos moschatus) ; Fabricius, no 
doubt, described it under the name of yak (i?os grunniens ) as a 
member of the Greenland fauna, but all he saw was a skull 
drifted in the ice from the high North. The gradual discoveries 
of Kane, Hayes, and lastly of Hall, have shown that in the 
very highest reaches of Smith’s Sound it is quite abundant, 
though entirely unknown south of the glaciers of Melville 
Bay. Almost contemporaneous with this discovery was that of 
the German expedition to East Greenland, that in a high 
latitude it was abundant on that coast, though quite unknown 
further to the south. Take, again, the lemming ( My odes 
torquatus). Scoresby, and afterwards the German expedition, 
found it on the north-eastern shores of Greenland ; but it was 
quite unknown on the western shores until Dr. Bessells, of Hall’s 
expedition, obtained it from Smith’s Sound. Here is a very 
curious distribution of life, the same animals being found at 
about the same latitude on both coasts, and yet unknown 
south of these parallels. The interior, it is believed, is covered 
with ice. The animals could not have crossed over a stretch of 
600 or 700 miles without food. Have they worked their way 
round the northern end of the continent, and if so, what is the 
northern termination of Greenland ? Is the interior, as is believed 
by the best informed physical geographers, covered with a great 
glacier covering? I think the preponderance of facts is in 
favour of this view, and that the moraine supposed to have been 
seen on it, near Upernavik, is only local. Further to the south 
we find no moraine, and if the ice crossed over or infringed on 
any land in the interior such moraine would be sure to be 
found in it. Lastly, the ermine ( Mustela erminea) has been 
found on the east coast, though this animal is entirely unknown 
on the west. The habits of few of the Arctic mammals are well 
known, and any notes on these would be interesting. The 
European birds — in large numbers and of many species — every 
summer migrate to the furthest North. For what purposes do 
they migrate, and where do they all go to? Professor Newton, 
| of Cambridge, has called attention to the strange movements 
of the knot ( Tringa canutus ), which migrates to Greenland and 
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