Robert Brown

“ In zoology we must not expect too much. The researches of the expedition will be made in a very high northern latitude, where animal life is scarce. Perhaps the very scarcity of it makes the species which live there more interesting. The extreme northern range of animal or vegetable life is always valuable to know; and accordingly every specimen, more especially of the land fauna, will be an important acquisition to science. ”

“ We now know that Greenland is a country in exactly such a condition, and it is to it that we must look for an explanation of the glacial phenomena of Britain and the rest of the northern hemisphere. The naturalists, by a thorough study of glacial phenomena in that great country of glaciers, can do much to solve the questions now under discussion. In this country, and indeed in any country but Greenland, we cannot do so. ”

“ Fabricius, no doubt, described it under the name of yak (Bos grunniens) as a member of the Greenland fauna, but all he saw was a skull drifted in the ice from the high North. The gradual discoveries of Kane, Hayes, and lastly of Hall, have shown that in the very highest reaches of Smith's Sound it is quite abundant, though entirely unknown south of the glaciers of Melville Bay. Almost contemporaneous with this discovery was that of the German expedition to East Greenland, that in a high-latitude it was abundant on that coast, though quite unknown further to the south. ”

“ The habits of few of the Arctic mammals are well known, and any notes on these would be interesting. The European birds — in large numbers and of many species — every summer migrate to the furthest North. For what purposes do they migrate, and where do they all go to? Professor Newton, of Cambridge, has called attention to the strange movements of the knot (Tringa canutus) , which migrates to Greenland and Iceland, but it soon leaves these regions and must move further to the north ”

“ Nowadays naturalists are not so particular about having a long list of new animals, or rare species. They are more anxious about the range of particular forms of interest, about questions of structure, and other particulars bearing on the philosophical questions of the day. These points can frequently only be made out by dissections on the spot. The large animals will afford plenty of material to the scalpel of the anatomist. What would a home-staying anatomist give, even to dissect on an ice-floe, a narwhal, or a white whale in a fresh or in any condition. ”

“ The northern ranges of the birds, their nesting, their eggs, their changes of plumage, their parasites, and a dozen other points well known to the ornithologist, would give even this unpromising department of Arctic zoölogy some interest, and yield results which science will not despise. ”

“ It would be worth while, I think, for the naturalists attached to the Arctic expedition to examine any raised beaches they may come across, with a view to discover whether the facts bear on the conclusions drawn by Swedish geologists, for it is difficult to believe that a considerable change of climate could take place in Spitzbergen without also leaving traces in North Greenland." All these questions are of deep philosophical interest. There is another not less interesting. ”

“ It is true that Mytilus is occasionally seen attached to algæ in these regions, but such rare birds are but poor representatives of the banks of the same shell which are met with in the same island. Mr. Nathorst, of the Swedish Geological Survey, tells me that in 1870 he examined these shell-banks, and found one made up of Mytilus resting upon a scratched rock-surface (now far removed from any glacier) , and the scratches ran parallel with the fjord. The Mytilus still lives in Greenland, as does also Cyprinà islandica, but Littorina littorea does not. ”

“ Before the next part of this review is in the hands of its readers an English expedition — the object of which is to explore the wide unknown region surrounding the North Pole — will be well on its way to the scene of its labours for the next two years. An event so remarkable in the annals of science cannot be allowed to pass unnoted. ”

“ For instance, a series of pendulum-observations at or near the Pole would be of service in determining the true figure of the earth. The nearest point to the Pole at which the pendulum has been swung for geodetical purposes is six hundred miles from that point, and yet Sir Edward Sabine's observations are those which we chiefly rely upon for our knowledge of the earth's figure towards its northern termination. ”

“ It is to be hoped that they, like the commander, will not be hampered by too many instructions prepared by naturalists, who, however eminent, may be unaware of the difficulties which a naturalist has to meet with in his researches in such a region. ”