In most of these former voyages it has been the custom to include in the Natural History appendices lists of animals and specimens procure! in Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. It appeared to me that such a procedure was not in the interests of research. Most certainly the lists obtained by the Expedition of 1875-76 might be greatly enlarged if they included all species observed after entering Davis Strait (the latitude of the north of Scotland); but believing that the true interests of biological science would be better served by omitting from our collections all specimens made during a hasty voyage and superficial examination of the fauna of regions already more or less investigated, I confined the collections reported on by myself, and submitted to specialists, to those made after entering Smith Sound, or, generally speaking, to the north of the seventy-ninth parallel of latitude. Our previous knowledge of the regions north of this degree, on the American side of the Arctic Circle, was based entirely upon the observations of our American predecessors, the illustrious arctic travellers Kane and Hayes; and to those of the United States Polar Expedition, under the command of the late Captain Hall, in the 'Polaris.'
Notwithstanding the obstacles encountered by these observers, arising in a great measure from the inefficiency of their equipment, the excellence of their work is not to be gainsaid. Kane's volumes are replete with facts in reference to the Natural History of Smith Sound, though the author warns us in his preface that his book "is not a record of scientific investigation." Hayes, during his journey along the shores of Grinnell Land, one of the most remarkable on record, collected and brought back a series of geological specimens,[1] which at the time represented the most northern palæontological collection in existence; and our much larger collections from the same localities entirely bear out his investigations. The collection of invertebrates,[2] made by Hayes at Port Foulke, embraced—Crustacea, 22 species; Annelida, 18 species; Mollusca, 21 species; Echinodermata, 7 species; Acalephæ, 1 species; and it is recorded by Dr. Stimpson, in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, for May, 1863, that "the number of species collected by Dr. Hayes is greater than that brought back by any single expedition which has yet visited those seas, as far as can be judged by published accounts."
