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CHAPTER VIII.

Some Account of the Fishes and other Zoological Productions of the Northern Regions of America.

Sturgeon-Salmon-Trout-Char-Capelan-White Fish-Blue FishHerring-Pike-Burbot-Perch-Bull-head-Northern Insects-Their Natural Preservation from Cold-More Northern Extension of Tropical Forms in America than in Europe-Bees-Extension Westwards of the Honey-bee-Diptera-Melville Island Spider-Butterflies.

THE fishes of the northern regions are of great importance as articles of food in countries where a nutritious diet is by no means easy to obtain; and where, as we have seen in the course of our historical disquisition, tripe de roche, burnt bones, and fur-jackets are too frequently the sorry substitutes for better fare. We shall mention a few of the characteristic kinds.

A species of sturgeon called sterlet (Accipenser Ruthenus) abounds in the Saskatchawan. The fishery at Cumberland House is most productive during the spring and summer. This is a much smaller species than the A. huso. An individual weighing 60 pounds is considered large.

The Coppermine River salmon (Salmo Hernii) is shaped like a common salmon, with a somewhat larger head. Its size is inferior to that of the British salmon. It is captured in great quantities in the leap at Bloody Fall, on the Coppermine, in the months of July and August. Many varieties of trout also occur in the lakes and rivers of the northern parts of America; but as the kinds which frequent our own otherwise well known streams are still vaguely indicated by naturalists, the reader need not wonder that we have little definite information to communicate regarding those of such far distant lands. The Indians do not appear to designate their trouts by specific appellations, but use a general term; the Crees call them nammacoos, the Chipewyans thlooeesinneh, and the Esquimaux arkallook. The vividness of their spots and markings seems to vary with the season; and the colour and consequent condition

of the flesh are likewise liable to change. They attain at times to an enormous size; Dr. Richardson frequently observed trouts weighing 40 pounds. In Manito or God's Lake, they are reported to attain the size of 90 pounds. A species nearly allied to the char (S. alpinus), but with the tail more forked, and a blunter snout, was taken in a lake in Melville Island.

The capelan or lodde (S. Grænlandicus) was observed in large shoals along the shallow shores of Bathurst's Inlet. The white fish (Coregonus albus) is named thlooaek by the Copper Indians, and tittameg by the traders. It varies in weight from three to eight pounds, and sometimes attains even a much greater size. It abounds in every lake and river of the American arctic regions, and forms a most delicious food, being eaten without satiety as almost the sole article of diet at some of the trading-posts for a series of years. Back's grayling (C. signifer) is the poisson bleu of the furdealers. This beautiful fish prefers the strong rapids, and rises eagerly at the artificial fly. It was found during the first expedition only in the clear rivers to the northward of Great Slave Lake, and measures about 16 inches exclusive of the caudal fin. The common herring (Clupea Has rengus) was caught in Bathurst Inlet early in the month of August; and pike (Esox lacius?) are common in all the lakes. The burbot (Gadus lota) is likewise a frequent fish in every lake and river. It preys indiscriminately on what ever other species it is able to swallow, and in the spring its stomach is generally crammed with cray-fish to such a degree as to distort the shape of its own body.* It is little prized as food. There is a kind of perch, sufficiently common about Cumberland House, which resembles our common perch in shape, but at the. same time differs in several respects from the European species. Its length to the caudal fin is about 19 inches. A peculiar cottus (C. polaris, Sabine), similar in its habits to C. gobia, was found to occur abundantly on the shores of North Georgia in pools of water left by the ebbing of the tide. The largest were not more than two inches long. The six-horned bull-head (C. hexacornis), is also frequent in the Arctic seas.‡

* Appendix to Franklin's First Journey, p. 124.

Supplement to the Appendix to Parry's First Voyage, p. 213.

For some notices of shells and other invertebrate animals of the

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We have little to say of the insects of the northern regions. Cold is in general adverse to the production and increase of insect life, and even temperate climates are much less productive than tropical and equatorial regions, in relation to those tiny tribes. It is probable, however, that the distribution of many northern species is still unknown. It was formerly supposed that in Iceland there were none, and that even in Norway there were very few, and their absence from those countries was attributed to excess of cold. Horrebow contradicted this opinion in regard to Iceland, although Dr. Hooker, in his interesting "Recollections" of a tour in that island, states that he met with few, yet Olafsen and Provalsen, during their residence there, collected 200 different species in one small valley.†

Otho Fabricius resided six years in Greenland, and collected only 63 species of the insect class properly so called.‡ In the still higher latitude of Winter Harbour, where Sir Edward Parry sojourned, only six species of insects were collected from the beginning of the month of September till the August following. In Greenland, according to Mr. Kirby, every order of insect has its representatives, except Orthoptera and Hemiptera; but in Melville Island, besides these deficiencies, neither coleopterous nor neuropterous species were observed; and even the mosquito, that shrill tyrant of the Lapland plains, appears to have ceased from troubling along those hyperborean shores. It must, however, be borne in mind, that insects can escape the extremes of cold, not only, as Mr. Macleay observes, by passing certain periods in the pupa or torpid state, but also by being. while in that state usually buried in the earth, where they are but slightly sensible even of the most extreme rigour of winter. "What they chiefly require is the presence of heat during some period of their existence; and the greater, within certain limits, is the heat, the more active will be their vital principle. On the American continent the extremes of heat and cold in the course of the year are, as is. well known, incomparably greater than in places of the

Arctic Regions, consult the Supplement above named. See also a List of Zoophytes by Dr. Fleming, in the Appendix to Captain Parry's Second Voyage to the Arctic Regions. *First edition, p. 272.

Fauna Grænlandica

t Voyage en Islande. t. i.

same latitude in Europe. We may, therefore, readily conceive how families of insects will inhabit a wider range of latitude in the former country than in the latter. We see also how insects may swarm in the very coldest climates, such as Lapland and Spitzbergen, where the short summer can boast of extraordinary rises in the thermometer; because the energy of the vital principle in such animals is, within certain limits, proportionate to the degree of warmth to which they may be subjected, and escapes in a manner the severe action of cold."* It is on the above principles also that Mr. Macleay accounts for what certainly at first seems an extraordinary circumstance in the geography of insects; namely, that their tropical structure extends much farther north in America than in Europe,-that is, in a manner directly the reverse of that which has been noted by botanists to occur in the vegetable kingdom. When we examine Copris carnifex, Cetonia nitida, Rutela 6-punctata, and other insects from the neighbourhood of New-York, and compare them with species of the same families from Brazil, we shall find their difference of structure infinitely less than that which would result from a comparison of the entomological productions of the environs of Madrid with those of the banks of the Congo.

Mr. Macleay admits, that although in his opinion the insect tribes suffer less in cold climates than plants, it does not therefore follow that the prevalence of cold has no effect in relation to the destruction or prevention of insect life. In truth, the diminution of the number of species becomes very conspicuous as we advance towards the poles. But this the learned author of the Hora Entomologica supposes to be owing rather to the short continuance of the summer warmth, than to the lowness of its existing degree. In accordance with this view we certainly find that many insects, such as gnats, mosquitoes, &c. which pass their larva state in water, thus avoiding the extremest cold, and whose existence in the perfect state being naturally ephemeral, must, therefore, suffer little from the shortness of summer,-are nowhere more troublesome than among the moors and marshes of the north. On the other hand, the number of coleopterous species, which, being naturally longer lived,

* Hore Entomologicæ, part i. p. 45.

require a greater continuance of warmth, is sensibly dimin ished amid those dreary wastes.*

Several specimens of a species of caterpillar were found in Melville Island. They occurred in the vicinity of Salix Arctica and Saxifraga oppositifolia, and a new moth (Bombyx Sabini, K.) was found in a swampy part of the island. The honey-bee (Apis mellifica) is supposed to be not an indige, nous but an imported species in America. Our land expeditions did not observe its occurrence to the north of Canada, The Americans have now settled the Missouri, as far as the 95th meridian, and it is probable that the New-England men, in their journeys westward, carried hives along with them. According to Mr. Warden, the honey-bee was not found to the westward of the Mississippi prior to the year 1797; but it is now well known, and has been so for a considerable time, as high up the Missouri as the Maha nation; having proceeded westward 600 miles in fourteen years. Such a distance seems great for these tiny creatures to advance by the ordinary process of swarming, even supposing that the flight of the new colonies was invariably in a western direction. It is at the rate of 43 miles a-year; but they have, perhaps, been smitten by the Yankee passion of settling beyond the clearings. A wild bee (Apis alpina, Fah. Bombus Arcticus, K.) of a black colour, with the base and apex of the thorax and the anterior half of the abdomen pale yellow, is very common within the Arctic Circle. Scarcely any genus of the insect creation has so large a range as this of Bombus. It is found in the Old World and in the New,-and from the limits of phænogamous vegetation to the equator; but its metropolis appears to be within the temperate zone. The range of the species in question seems limited by the Arctic Circle, and to go from Greenland only westward, for it does not appear to

* Hora Entomologicæ, part i. p. 46.

† Statistical, Political, and Historical Account of the United States of America, vol. iii. p. 139.

Dr. Richardson lately informed me, that in the course of his northern journey, he saw some bees in very high latitudes resembling our common humblebee, but that he did not at the time ascertain the exact species, and the circumstances under which he was then placed unfortunately prevented his preserving specimens of the softer insects.

The insect above alluded to is a distinct species from the Apis alpina of Linn., which is black, with the upper side of the abdomen, all but the base, covered with ferruginous hair,

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