orms, and the surface of the sea on a sunny day swarms
with pteropods, beroids, surface-crustacea, &c. Dr. Stuxberg will give,
farther on, a sketch of this department of animal life, which in the
high north is so rich in variety. In the meantime I can but refer to the
large number of papers on this subject which have been issued in the
publications of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Of the higher animal types a greater number within the Polar
territory occur in the sea than on the land. Thus by far the greater
number of the birds I have enumerated above belong to the sea, not
to the land, and this is the case with nearly all the animals which
for three or four hundred years back have been the objects of
capture in the Arctic regions. This industry, which during the
whale-fishing period yielded a return perhaps equal to that of the
American oil-wells in our time, has not now in the most limited
degree the importance it formerly had. For the animal whose capture
yielded this rich return, the right whale (_Balaena mysticetus_ L.),
is now so extirpated in these navigable waters, that the whalers
were long ago compelled to seek new fishing-places in other parts of
the Polar seas. It is therefore no longer the whale, but other
species of animals which attract the hunter to the coasts of
Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya.

Of these animals the most important for the last fifty years has
been the walrus, but it too is in course of being extirpated. It is
now seldom found during summer on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya
south of Matotschkin Schar. During our visits to that island in
1875, 1876, and 1878 we did not see one of these animals. But in the
Kara Gate, on the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, and at certain places
in the Kara Sea, abundant hunting is still to be had. Earlier in the
year the walrus is also to be met with among the drift-ice on the
west coast, and to the south, off the mouth of the Petchora,
although the number of the animals that are captured by the Samoyeds
at Chabarova appears to be exceedingly small. On the other hand the
Dutch, in their first voyages hither, saw a considerable number of
these gregarious animals. The walrus, however, did not then occur
here in such abundance as they did at the same time on Spitzbergen
and Bear Island, which evidently formed their principal haunts.

During Stephen Bennet's third voyage to Bear Island in 1606, 700 to
800 walruses were killed there in six hours, and in 160