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Show 312 MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREFANLAND. [May 28, In addition to these well-established species there are others frequently entered among the Greenland Mammalia, some of which have but scant right to a place, and others are entirely mythical, as I will show in a section on these animals. Among these I class Gulo borealis (Ursus luscus), Phoca ursina (Callorhinus ursinus), and Trichechus manatus (Rhytina gigas) as animals with little or no claim to be admitted members of the Arctic fauna. The columns for the "local distribution in Greenland are arranged solely with reference to our present knowledge of the range of the species in the country, and, being only temporary and to a great extent artificial, are subject to changes as our knowledge of the species extends. At the same time I think it only right to say that they have been very carefully compiled, after considerable study of the natural range of the species, and upon principles akin to those for tbe general distribution of the species. The column headed '-East coast only" I have erected for the reception of Myodes torquatus solely, all the species of the east coast, so far as we know, being, with this exception, also common to the west. The east coast has, however, been very little explored, and no doubt something remains to be added to our knowledge of the range of species on that coast. On a comparison of the Greenland fauna with that of other portions of the Arctic regions, we can see no reason for looking upon it, in common with the flora and the avi- and icthyo-faunas, as other than essentially Arctic-European, all of the species of Mammalia, with the exception of Ovibos moschatos, being found in either Spitzbergen or Nova Zembla, while many of the Arctic-American species are not found in Greenland. The only true American Mammal found in Greenland is the Musk-Ox, which might have crossed from the western shores of Smith's Sound (where Eskimo tradition describes it as once abundant) on the ice to the eastern shore, where alone in Greenland it seems to be now found, the great glaciers and ice-floes about Melville Bay seeming to act as a barrier to the southern and northern migrations of the animals on either side of them, and of Man equally with the lower animals. Looking at the fauna of Spitzbergen *, if we take exception to the very dubious omission which Malmgren has made, we find that there is only one species of mammal found in these islands not found in Greenland ; and this exception is Mustela erminea, which the author named even marks as doubtful (?) ; and the same is true of the mammals of Nova Zembla, if we take Von Baer's listf as representing the present state of our knowledge, though published more than thirty years ago. In this the exception is also a doubtful one ("a little white animal, species uncertain"), but probably an Ermine. I therefore think that we are justified in looking upon the mammalian fauna of Greenland as Arctic-European, and not Arctic-Ame- * Malmgren, loc. cit.; Scoresby, 'Arctic Regions ;' Phipps's ' Voyage ;' Parry's 'Attempt;' Laing's ' Voyage to Spitzbergen,' &c. &c. t K. E. von Baer, Wiegmann's Archiv fur Nalurgeschichtc (1839), pt. vii. (vide Murray,' Geogr. Distrib. Mamm.'). |