Marco Polo also says in his account of the country of the peace-loving nomad Tatar tribes living in the north, that there are to be found there white bears most of them twenty hands long, large black foxes, wild asses (reindeer), and a little animal called "rondes," from which we get the sable fur.[72] As the Polar bear is only to be found on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, these statements prove that in the thirteenth century the northernmost part of Asia was inhabited or at least visited by hunters. Olaus Magnus even describes the bear's mode of life not incorrectly,
with the addition that it was customary to present their skins to the altars of cathedrals and parish churches in order that the feet of the priest might not freeze during mass.[73] The Polar bear however first became more generally known in Western Europe by the Arctic voyages of the English and Dutch, and its price has now sunk so much that its skin, which was once considered an article of extraordinary value, is now, in adjusting accounts between the owners of a vessel and the walrus-hunters, reckoned at from twenty-five to fifty Scandinavian crowns (say twenty-eight to fifty-six shillings).
In 1609 Stephen Bennet, during his seventh voyage to Bear Island, captured two young Polar bears, which were brought to England and kept at Paris Garden (Purchas, iii. p. 562). Now such animals are very frequently brought to Norway in order to be sent from thence to the zoological gardens of Europe, in which the Polar bear is seldom wanting. The capture is facilitated by the circumstance that the young bears seldom leave their mother when she is killed.
Along with the reindeer and the bear there are found in the regions now in question only two other land-mammalia, the mountain fox (Vulpes lagopusL.) and the lemming (Myodes obensis Brants).[74] The fox is rather common both on Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Its abode sometimes consists of a number of passages excavated in the ground and connected together, with several openings. Such a nest I saw on Wahlberg's Island in Hinloopen Strait on the summit of a fowl-fell; it was abundantly provided with a stock of half-rotten guillemots, concealed in the passages. The old foxes were not visible while we were there, but several young ones, some black, some variegated red and white, ran hither and thither from out the openings and played with supple movements in the neighbourhood of the nest. A similar nest also, with young that ran between its openings, played and hunted each other, I have seen on the north shore of Matotschkin Schar, and uninhabited fox-holes and passages at several places on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, commonly in the tops of dry sandy knolls.
The lemming is not found on Spitzbergen, but must at certain seasons occur in incredible numbers on Novaya Zemlya. For at the commencement of summer, when the snow has recently melted away, there are to be seen, everywhere in the level fertile places in the very close grass of the meadows, footpaths about an inch and a half deep, which have been formed during winter by the trampling of these small animals, under the snow, in the bed of grass or lichens which lies immediately above the frozen ground. They have in this way united with each other the dwellings they had excavated in the ground, and constructed for themselves convenient ways, well protected against the severe cold of winter, to their fodder-places. Thousands and thousands of animals must be required in order to carry out this work even over a small area, and wonderfully keen must their sense of locality be, if, as seems probable, they can find their way with certainty in the endless labyrinth they have thus formed. During the snow-melting season these passages form channels for running off the water, small indeed, but everywhere to be met with, and contributing in a considerable degree to the drying of the ground. The ground besides is at certain places so thickly strewed with lemming dung, that it must have a considerable influence on the condition of the soil.
In the Arctic regions proper one is not tormented by the mosquito,[75] and viewed as a whole the insect fauna of the entire Polar area is exceedingly scanty, although richer than was before supposed. Arachnids, acarids, and podurids occur most plentifully, Dr. Stuxberg having been able during the Yenisej expedition of 1875 to collect a very large number of them, which were worked out after his return—the podurids by Dr. T. TULLBERG of Upsala, the arachnids by Dr. T. KOCH of Nurnberg. These small animals are found in very numerous individual specimens, among mouldering vegetable remains, under stones and pieces of wood on the beach, creeping about on grass, straws, &c.
Of the insects proper there were brought home from Novaya Zemlya, during the same expedition, nine species of coleoptera, which were determined by Professor F. W. MÄKLIN, of Helsingfors.[76] Some few hemiptera and lepidoptera and orthoptera, and a large number of hymenoptera and diptera from the same expedition have been examined by Lector A. E. HOLMGREN of Stockholm. Dr. Stuxberg also collected a large number of land-worms, which have been described by our countryman Dr. G. EISEN, now settled in California. The occurrence of this animal group in a region where the ground at the depth of a few inches is continually frozen, appears to me exceedingly remarkable—and from a general point of view the occurrence of insects in a land which is exposed to a winter cold below the freezing-point of mercury, and where the animal cannot seek protection from it by creeping down to a stratum of earth which never freezes, presupposes that either the insect itself, its egg, larva, or pupa, may be frozen stiff without being killed. Only
