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Show 1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 351 the Rat's. At some of the more southern settlements they can occasionally survive the winter and beget abundantly. Both the Mouse and Rat Mere introduced as far north as Kane's and Hayes's ships wintered, but I cannot learn that they got naturalized.] 8. LEPUS GLACIALIS, Leach. L. arcticus, ibid. Grcenl. Ukalek. The Hare is a common animal over the whole coast, from north to south, east and west. It is, however, seen more seldom in the north of the Danish trading-limits, and there are only a few hundreds shot annually. They are said to be rather rare on the east coast. I cannot see why its beautiful white skin is not more used. At one time the Danes used to send quantities home, but they could get no market for it. From the Hare the natives spin a kind of yarn which they occasionally knit into caps, for a summer head-dress, for the men and children. It is difficult (indeed, almost impossible) to give characters whereby this species can be separated from the Lepus variabilis of Europe when the former is in its summer dress ; and the skull presents equal difficulties. I have, however, preferred to look upon it as nominally distinct, though I really believe that it is only a climatic variety of L. variabilis, Pallas. 9. [Sus SCROFA, Linn. Grcenl. Polike. It is kept at some of the southern settlements.] 10. OVIBOS MOSCHATUS (Gmel.), Blainv. Grcenl. et Esk. Umimak. In the 'Fauna Grcenlandica,' p. 28. no. 17, Fabricius has classed Bos grunniens, L., as one of the animals of Greenland, because he thought that he had found (on a piece of drift ice) some remains of it, consisting of the greater portion of the skull of an animal " very like an Ox." He was of opinion that this was a portion of the Yak. He did not, however, consider it to be a native of Greenland, but rather to have been drifted from northern Asia on the ice, the flesh having been eaten by Polar Bears. Any one can see, by examining the figure which Fabricius afterwards gave of this specimen (Bid. Selsk. Skriv. N. Saml. iii. 82), that it was the Musk-Ox ; and, indeed, he afterwards acknowledged so himself (Bid. Selsk. Skr. 3. N., vi.). It is therefore, after this, somewhat surprising to find a zoologist so well acquainted with the Greenland fauna as the elder Reinhardt stating that the Musk-Ox, which, like Fabricius, he called Bos grunniens, rarely comes from Melville Island to Greenland*. Mr. Murray seems to doubt on which side of Greenland Fabricius met with his specimen; but there need be no doubt on that matter, as it * Isis, 1848, p. 248; Schmarda's ' Geograph. Vcrbrcitung(1853), p. 370 ;./«•?<• Murray's ' Geogr. Dist. of the Mammals,' p. 140. |