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CHAPTER II 
FAUNA 
Mammals 
Knowledge of the animal life of Baffin island is .limited, although the 
island has been visited by many explorers and whalers. The comparative 
dearth of information is due, in part, to the fact that former explorers, 
with one or two exceptions, merely cruised along the coasts or if they 
wintered in the region, remained confined to their winter quarters. 
Many of the marine mammals are imperfectly known. The available 
information is, in the main, compounded from isolated observations of 
different observers. This is particularly true in the case of the cetacea, 
various species of which have become scarce, and the information about 
them has been largely furnished by whalers whose statements are not 
always reliable. Direct information obtained by the present writer relates 
mainly to the white porpoise or “white whale”, Delphinapterus leucas. 
Information bearing on the other cetacea has been drawn from Low 1 
(1906, pp. 258-276), Kumlien (1879, pp. 64-67), and Hantzsch (1913, pp. 
141-160). Whaling was active in Kumlien’s day, declining at the time 
of Low’s visit, and has now ended except as carried on by the Hudson’s 
Bay Company in the cases of the white porpoise and the narwhal. 
In the following list no reference is made to the musk-ox, Ovibos 
moschatus. The animal does not occur on Baffin island and, so far as 
known, never did so. Its presence was assumed by earlier writers because 
utensils of musk-ox horn were possessed by Eskimo of various northern 
and some southern localities. The horn material, however, was obtained 
by, for instance, hunting parties crossing to Devon island where musk- 
oxen w r ere once comparatively common. The animals live, or did live, 
on Greenland, Ellesmere, Devon, Melville, and other islands, and once 
were numerous on the mainland northwest of Hudson bay. It is strange 
that of the major islands of the Arctic archipelago, only Baffin island, the 
largest but one and with a climate more favourable than some, has not 
been occupied by musk-oxen. 
While on the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1923, the writer w-as told 
by Mr. William Duval that Eskimo on the west coast of Baffin island had 
killed a silver-grey animal somewhat smaller than a muskrat and with a 
naked, round tail. The Eskimo name the animal, “sicsee”, What animal 
this may be, is not apparent; probably the hearsay description is inaccur- 
ate. 
Corporal F. Mclnnes, who has spent several years in the Arctic service, 
states that the Eskimo at Igloolik (an island off the northeast shore of 
Melville peninsula) told him of an animal having food pouches in the 
cheeks and otherwise answering to the description of a ground squirrel. 
This, undoubtedly, is Citellus p. parryii w'hich does not appear to have 
been previously recorded nearly so far north. Since Fury and Hecla 
*The date following an author’s name will enable the reader to find the complete bibliographic reference in the 
list of papers quoted at the end of the chapter, page 122. 
