44 
REIKEVIG. 
appears, that the truly indigenous animals of 
the class, Mammalia , are reduced to the small 
number of amphibious ones, which are found on 
their shores. The white bear is now and then 
conveyed to their northern coasts, by the floating 
ice islands, from the opposite shore of Greenland, 
but none had been over since the preceding year, 
and those were soon dispatched by the people 
living in the neighbourhood. Their skins are al¬ 
ways the property of the king of Denmark. * Just 
before I entered the town of Reikevig, on my 
return in the afternoon, I was surprised to find 
a guard of twelve of our ship’s crew, armed with 
muskets and cutlasses, standing before the go- 
<e beavers,” continues Mr. Pennant, “ and think of the 
“ management of the squirrels, which, in cases of similar 
<e necessity, make a piece of bark their boat, and tail the 
<e sail, I no longer hesitate to credit the relation.” I am 
sorry such a ridiculous story should have been believed by a 
British zoologist. Iceland certainly produces no species of 
Mus which our country does not possess, and the mice that 
are found there are not likely to be furnished with any in¬ 
stinct or faculties superior to those of our own mice. The 
circumstance related above is laughed at by the more sensible 
Icelanders, and the species that performs these extraor¬ 
dinary feats, which, according to Povelsen, is the Mus 
sylvaticus of Linnaeus, is not, to my knowledge, found in 
that country. 
* For an account of this revolution, see Appendix, A« 
and B. 
