99 
said to be filled with ice needles like small bits of glass, and so 
cold that even an iced fishing-hook, which is let down to the 
bottom and kept there for a long time, will not thaw. This reason 
I must, however, take to be utterly unfounded as the redfish 
lives at so great depths that it does not seem likely that the frost 
may have any influence on it, and, what is more, this very winter 
the cold only rarely reached any lower degree than 10° R. 
I must however acknowledge that the redfish gathered by me 
looked as if their eyes were frozen, but this may very well 
have been due to the floating in the sea. On the other hånd, 
it struck me that not a single one of the fishes which I saw that 
day had the stomach protruding from its mouth, as is otherwise 
always the case with redfish which are hauled up w.th a line. 
The Greenlanders further informed me that it is not uncommon 
at this place that the redfish rises lo the surface in this manner, 
and that it does not happen to any other fish. Sometimes it rises 
every year in greater or smaller numbers, sometimes at an interval 
of .several years but always in the months from January to April 
inclusively, mostly in February and March. About 12 years ago 
it is said to have risen so profusely and so widely that the fiord, 
seen from the mountain, was red with dead redfish. In other 
places in the district it is also said to have occurred in the same 
way, but most rarely and then in small numbers. At the colo- 
nies of Julianehaab and Frederikshaab where I have spent several 
years, and where there are lots of redfish I never heard anything 
of such occurrences.” 
In a letter of April 4th of the same year R. Muller adds as 
follows: “When the weather has permitted the Greenlanders to go 
fishing, larger or smaller numbers of redfish have been found 
in different places every day from the middle of February till this 
day. Lately the fiord has been blocked by floating ice preventing 
the Greenlanders from going to sea, and every day lots of seagulls, 
ravens and sea-eagles have been seen feasting on the dead red¬ 
fish in the ice.” 
As I supposed that this mortality was due to hydrographical 
reasons, and that a shifting of the polar current possibly might 
have a mortal influence on the redfish, in likeness with the an- 
nihilating influence on “the tilefish” (Lopholatilus chamæleonticeps 
7 * 
