Dr. Axel Ohiin. 
59 
little criticism. Yet I am convinced that the seal most common in 
Inglefield Gulf next to the one just described is : 
4. Phoca barbata.— We did not obtain any specimen of these 
big and characteristic seals during our short summer trip, although 
they appeared frequently near the ship and at least one fine specimen 
was shot and nearly landed by a member of our party. We learned, 
however, that the bearded seal or “ oogsook/’ as the natives call it, 
is not uncommon along the east side of this part of Baffin Bay and 
Smith Sound. Many individuals were killed last winter in Inglefield 
Gulf by Peary’s companions. Here, as well as in the pack-ice off 
Cape York, we observed many seals which I am quite sure belonged 
to this species. 
The third form of the genus Phoca which I consider quite common 
in Baffin Bay is 
5. Phoca grcenlandica.— The Greenland seal prefers, in these 
regions as well as in other seas which it frequents, the vast pack-ice 
fields far from the coast. On our northward trip in Melville Bay, and 
on our passage to Cary Islands, we saw many great herds of a seal 
belonging, without doubt, to the Jaen Mayen seal. We also met 
with the ^‘harp seal,” as this species is called by the Newfoundland 
sailors, in the pack-ice along the coast of Ellesmere Land from Cape 
Faraday into Jones Sound as far as we penetrated, i. some few 
miles west from Cone Island in lat. 76° 14' 53" N. and long. 81° 52' 
36" W. 
6. Cystophora cristata.-— Although this large seal does not fre- 
quent Baffin Bay or Smith Sound, I mention it, because, on our 
northern trip to Disco, we killed five specimens, all of them being old 
males. We encountered the hooded seal in considerable numbers in 
the east Greenland ice or ‘ ‘ stor-is,” as it is termed by the Danes, which, 
as it is well known, floats with the cold Arctic current along the east 
Greenland coast through Denmark Strait, round Cape Farewell 
as far north as Holsteinsborg, in lat. 67° N. We entered this ice on 
July 1 2th, soon after sighting the Greenland coast, off Cape Desola- 
tion, in lat. 60° 23' N., some miles northward from Cape Farewell. 
In this ice we steamed for two days, not very far from the coast, and 
everywhere we saw the “ klapmyds ” of the Norwegian whalers 
sleeping in the bright sunshine on the heavy ice-floes. 
The question naturally suggests itself: How are these animals able 
to climb the high, steep walls of this ice, whose abrupt sides often rise 
six or seven feet from the surface of the sea ? While on a Norwe- 
