Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/129

Rh were found to be excellent eating, although provokingly small." They have been met with on the sea ice three miles from the nearest land. There appear to be no lemmings in Spitsbergen or Franz Josef Land, but otherwise they occur in all Arctic lands, and spread themselves far south in Europe, Asia, and America. Brehm has graphically described the countless swarms of lemmings that sweep the tundra, leaving a track of desolation in their rear.

Such is the mammalian life of Arctic lands: think of the contrast in Antarctica, where, in an area of five and a half million square miles, or a continent the size of Europe and Australia combined, there is not a single mammal! Nor, as far as we know, did mammals ever exist in that mighty continent at any time!

Just as Australia was cut off from northern lands before the advent of the carnivores or any of the higher mammals, so there seems good evidence that the great continent of Antarctica, which appears to have been connected at one time with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and South America, was isolated before the advent of mammals in the Trias, in which system the first relics of mammalian life appear. The land connections of Antarctica with adjacent continents have been dated even as late as Eocene times. "The exact date at which