Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/441

Rh eyelid fleshy, and of a brick-red colour; tip of the bill gamboge-yellow, merging into ashy-grey on the culmen and base of both mandibles; legs and feet black. Their note is very shrill, approaching more to that of the Arctic Tern than to the harsh note of the Glaucous Gull. The stomach of the individual pro- cured was full of red flesh, probably seal-meat. Eider Ducks were nesting numerously on Brevoort Island ; three to four were the full complement of eggs; these were all deeply incubated by this date. A pair of Ravens wheeled overhead, and pounced down on the eggs of a duck that had been disturbed from her charge. A few Black Guillemots were fishing in the open pools ; these, with a Snow Bunting found dead on the shore, completed the list of birds observed at Payer Harbour.

On the 4th August, Cape Sabine was rounded, and making our way to the westward through Buchanan Strait, we coasted for some miles along the north shore of Ellesmere Land, finally anchoring in a small bay, which was named Alexandra Haven. The rocks in that neighbourhood were gneiss, syenite and schists, with garnets. Not far from our anchorage a valley of considerable size debouched on the shore with a fine glacier at its head some three miles inland. A watercourse ran down the valley, issuing from the glacier; at the time of our visit it was a clear rapid brook, but during July, in the height of the thaw, it must be a large torrent, judging from the size of the channel, on the sides of which patches of Epilobium latifolium were in bloom, with yellow- blossomed Vesicaria arctica. Nowhere in Smith Sound did we find a better supply of grasses than in this valley, which accounted for our picking up numerous cast-horns of Reindeer, whilst the foot-marks of Musk-oxen were common, the long soft wool of these latter animals being observed sticking to the sides of the boulders, under which they had been sheltering themselves. In the pellets ejected by some bird of prey — no doubt the Snowy Owl — I found the bones and skulls of Lemmings, Myodes torquatus. Sections of the bank showed that the stream from the glacier had cut through thin strata of sand and mud, which were in parts much crumpled up — evidence that at the time of deposition they had been disturbed by grounding ice, pushed on shore, whilst the numerous shells of Mya truncata and Saxicava rugosa, scattered through the strata, were plain evidence of their submarine deposition.

Buchanan Strait, or Hayes Sound, was at this period of the {{Right|{{sc|3 h}}