the ears having been marked by frost. That no immigration to
Spitzbergen of reindeer from Novaya Zemlya takes place, is shown
besides by the fact that the Spitzbergen reindeer appears to belong
to a race differing from the Novaya Zemlya reindeer, and
distinguished by its smaller size, shorter head and legs, and
plumper and fatter body.

[Illustration: REINDEER PASTURE. Green Harbour on Spitzbergen,
after a photograph taken by A. Envall on the 20th July, 1873. ]

The life of the wild reindeer is best known from Spitzbergen. During
summer it betakes itself to the grassy plains in the ice-free
valleys of the island, in late autumn it withdraws--according to the
walrus-hunters' statements--to the sea-coast, in order to eat the
seaweed that is thrown up on the beach, and in winter it goes back
to the lichen-clad mountain heights in the interior of the country,
where it appears to thrive exceedingly well, though the cold during
winter must be excessively severe; for when the reindeer in spring
return to the coast they are still very fat, but some weeks
afterwards, when the snow has frozen, on the surface, and a crust of
ice makes it difficult for them to get at the mountain sides, they
become so poor as scarcely to be eatable. In summer, however, they
speedily eat themselves back into condition, and in autumn they are
so fat that they would certainly take prizes at an exhibition of fat
cattle. In the museum at Tromsoe there is preserved the backbone of
a reindeer, shot on King Karl's Land, which had a layer of fat seven
to eight centimetres in thickness on the loin.

The reindeer, in regions where it has been much hunted, is very shy,
but, if the ground is not quite even, one can creep within range, if
the precaution be taken not to approach it from the windward. During
the rutting season, which falls in late autumn, it sometimes happens
that the reindeer attacks the hunter.

The Spitzbergen reindeer is not tormented, like the reindeer in
Lapland and on Novaya Zemlya, by "gorm" (inch-long larvae of a fly,
which are developed under the animal's skin). Its flesh is also
better than that of the Lapp reindeer. None of the contagious
diseases which of late years have raged so dreadfully among the
reindeer in northern Europe has ever, at least during the last fifty
years, been common on Spitzbergen.

The Polar bear occurs principally on coasts and islands which are
surrounded by drift-ice, often even upon ice-fields far out