ARCTIC FAUNA.—The limits of this fauna are easily fixed, as we include within them all animals living beyond the line where forests cease, and are succeeded by vast arid plains known as barren lands, or tundras. Though the air-breathing species are not numerous here, the large number of individuals compensates for this deficiency, and among the marine animals we find an astonishing profusion and variety of forms. The larger mammals which inhabit this zone are the white bear, the walrus, numerous species of seal, the reindeer, the musk-ox, the narwal, the cachalot, and whales in abundance. Among the smaller species, we may mention the white fox, the polar hare, and the lemming. Some marine eagles and a few wading-birds are found; but the aquatic birds of the family of Palmipedes(the web-footed birds), such as the gannets, cormorants, penguins, petrels, ducks, geese, mergansers, and gulls, abound in almost incredible pro fusion. No reptile is known in this zone. Fishes are very numerous, and the rivers, especially, swarm with a variety of species of the salmon family. The articulata are represented by numerous marine worms, and by minute crustaceans of the orders isopoda, and arophinoda • insects are rare, and of inferior types (only six species of insects were observed id' Melville island during Parry's residence of eleven months there). Only the
lowest forms of molluscs are found, viz., tunicata and acephala, with a few gasteropod a, and still fewer cephalopods. The racliata are represented by numerous jelly-fishes (especially the berifie), by several star-fishes and echini, and by very few polypes.
With this fauna is associated a peculiar race of men, known in America under the name of Esquimaux (q.v.), and in the Old World under the names of Laps, Samoyedes, and Tchuktsches. "This race," says Agassiz, "differs alike from the Indians of North America, from the whites of Europe, and the Mongols of Asia, to whom they are adja cent. The uniformity of their characters along the whole range of the arctic seas, forms one of the most striking resemblances which these people exhibit to the fauna with which they are so closely connected.