THE ARCTIC HARE.
THE COURAGE AND ENDURANCE OF ARCTIC ANIMALS.
BY THE CHIEF OF THE GREELY EXPEDITION.
Among the many errors that enter into popular belief regarding the arctic regions there are none more pronounced than some of those relating to its animal life. In many of their ideas the general public have been justified, for until the early part of this century even works of scientific research were not wholly free from fables and fictions of this character. Among these errors is one—i.e., that all arctic animals migrate to the south with coming winter—which especially pertains to the subject under consideration, for the fact that the animals treated of in this article are permanent residents of the arctic regions is one of the most convincing signs of their courage and endurance.
It was not unnatural for early travellers to believe that all arctic animals were migratory, and one need not go back farther than the narratives of Parry to find this opinion advanced. Instinct and a desire for self-preservation, it was said, impelled animals to pass to the southward, where the rigors incident to winter life would be less severe, and when spring came, with a similar instinct, they fled their coming foes from the south to seek safe breeding-places in the north. We now know that these animals abide in the north through the winter, but most people do not know how bitter their struggle for existence is.
Consider for a moment the winter environment of arctic animals, so as to fairly view the very adverse conditions under which, with a courage and endurance scarcely equalled elsewhere, they manage to maintain life from the passing of one summer to the coming of another. In order to speak with truth and exactness, the writer dwells on the arctic regions best known from personal observation—i.e., those portions of Greenland and Grinnell Land beyond the 80th degree of north latitude. These countries stretch not less than a thousand miles beyond the arctic circle, to within four hundred miles of the North Pole, and are from two to three hundred miles farther north than any human inhabitants.
Here arctic animals live and thrive in large numbers, under the disadvantages of darkness, cold, the inland ice, snow, and limited food-fields. The sun is totally absent for a period ranging from four to five months, during which time the darkness is such that even at mid-day first-class stars are clearly visible. With the passing sun comes the winter cold, so extreme that quicksilver becomes and remains solid for weeks at a time, and so prolonged that for successive months the temperature never rises above zero. Indeed, for only six scant weeks following midsummer does water remain unfrozen.
It should be borne in mind that the greater portion of these regions is eternally covered with what is known as the inland ice or ice-cap, which at irregular intervals covers and destroys the fertile meadows that furnish vegetable food. So it is that in this age there remain feeding-grounds for herbivorous animals only in such valleys as are yet untouched by the advancing ice-sheet, or from which the changing conditions of a thousand years have withdrawn the glaciers and restored the hardy arctic plants.