climate more or less at all times of the year; at this season,
however, when the earth is warm, it seldom or never lies on the
ground for a whole day together.

Lieutenant Beechey, on his return from a hunting excursion at
midnight on the 26th, reported that the ice along shore in that
direction appeared in a more forward state of dissolution than
near Winter Harbour, there being almost water enough in some
places to allow a boat to pass, with several large cracks in the
ice extending from the land some distance to seaward. The deep had
now become much more wild near the tents, and it was therefore
necessary to shift the ground a little. Lieutenant Beechey
succeeded in killing one of these animals, by lying down quietly,
and imitating the voice of a fawn, when the deer immediately came
up to him within gunshot. The horns of the deer killed at this
season, as Mr. Fisher remarks, were "covered with a soft skin
having a downy pile or hair upon it; the horns themselves were
soft, and at the tips flexible and easily broken." The foxes, of
which they saw several, "had a black spot or patch on each side of
the hind-quarters or hams."

On the 29th, one of the men, in returning on board from the daily
occupation of gathering sorrel, found in a hole upon the ice a
small fish, which appeared to be of the whiting species; and, on
going to examine the place where it was picked up, Mr. Edwards and
myself found two others exactly similar. As there was as yet no
communication between the sea and the upper surface of the ice
sufficiently large to admit these fish, it became a matter of
question in what manner they had got into the situation in which
we found them. It appeared most likely that they were frozen on