146 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
accounts between the owners of a vessel and the walrus-hunters, 
reckoned at from twenty-five to fifty Scandinavian crowns 
(say twenty-eight to fifty-six shillings). 
In 1609 Stephen Bennet, during his seventh voyage to Bear 
Island, captured two young Polar hears, which were brought to 
England and kept at Paris Garden (Purchas, hi. p. 562). hTow 
such animals are very frequently brought to Norway in order to 
be sent from thence to the zoological gardens of Europe, 
in which the Polar bear is Seldom wanting. The capture is 
facilitated by the circumstance that the young bears seldom 
leave their mother when she is killed. 
Along with the reindeer and the bear there are found in 
the regions now in question only two other land-mammalia, 
the mountain fox [Vul^es lagopus L.) and the lemming (Myodes 
obensis Brants).^ The fox is rather common both on Spitz- 
bergen and Novaya Zemlya. Its abode sometimes consists of 
a number of passages excavated in the ground and con¬ 
nected together, with several openings. Such a nest I saw on 
Wahlberg’s Island in Hinloopen Strait on the summit of a 
fowl-fell; it was abundantly provided with a stock of half- 
rotten guillemots, concealed in the passages. The old foxes 
were not visible while we were there, but several young ones, 
some black, some variegated red and white, ran hither and 
thither from out the openings and played with supple move¬ 
ments in the neighbourhood of the nest. A similar nest also, 
with young that ran between its openings, played and hunted 
each other, I have seen on the north shore of Matotschkih 
Schar, and uninhabited fox-holes and passages at several 
places on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, commonly in the 
tops of dry sandy knolls. 
The lemming is not found on Spitzbergen, but must at 
^ It is stated that wolves also occur on Novaya Zemlya as far up as to 
Matotsclikin Sound. They are exceedingly common on the north coasts of 
Asia and Eastern Europe. 
