DEAD WHALE. 
171 
sonous when eaten. The Eskimos on the western 
shores of Davis’s Straits carefully prohibit their dogs 
from devouring any portion of it. Its light creamy 
colour, rarely purely white, except when young, has 
gained for it, as we have said, the name of Brownie 
from the Scotch and Shetland whalers. Sometimes it 
is called the “ Farmer,” from its very agricultural 
appearance as it stalks leisurely over the furrowed 
fields of ice. 
Its principal food consists of the flesh of seals, in 
whose pursuit it is indefatigable ; but it is omnivorous 
in its diet, and will often clear an islet of eider 
ducks eggs in the course of a few hours. The rage 
of the animal on its failure to secure a seal by such 
artifices as we have mentioned is boundless. It roars 
hideously, tossing the snow in the air, and trotting off 
in a most indignant frame of mind. During the seal¬ 
ing season, says Dr. R. Brown, both in Greenland and 
Spitzbergen seas the bear is a constant attendant on 
the sealer for the sake of the carcases, in the pursuit of 
which it is sometimes “ more free than welcome.” He 
had also often seen it feeding on whales of different 
species which are found floating dead. In 1861 he 
saw upwards of twenty all busily devouring the huge 
inflated carcase of a Baloena mysticetus in Pond’s Bay, 
on the western shore of Davis’s Strait. The party 
