Reference to Nares (1877:385) reveals that Lieutenant Lewis A. Beaumont, under date of June 15 and 16, 1876, wrote in his field journal as follows: "I shot an ermine." In the daily accounts of his journey from Discovery Bay on Grinnell Land [= Ellesmere Island], across Robeson Channel and along the north coast of Greenland to the west base of Mount Farragut near 50° 30´ W he mentions the ermine only this once. For several other kinds of animals, Beaumont mentions individuals seen or shot, often with the notation that this is the second, or third seen. This mention of a kind of animal whenever seen was in accordance with orders. On page 39 of the Discovery Report (_op. cit._, 1877) in "General orders to sledging parties" by Captain G. S. Nares, Commanding the Expedition, we find ". . . note daily: IV State the animals seen and those shot." Reference to the map facing page 358 of the (_op. cit._) report reveals that on the 15th and 16th, camps were made by Beaumont in Gap Valley, each 7-3/4 miles northeast of Cape Brevoort, one camp on either side of the 82° line, and separated from each other by a distance of only 2-1/4 air line miles or 4-1/2 miles march according to his journal.
These several data, then, are the bases for designating the type locality of _M. e. polaris_, in the way that I have stated it at the beginning of this account of the subspecies.
The light-colored upper parts and more intensely yellow underparts well differentiate this subspecies from _arctica_ or _semplei_. Intergradation is suggested by a skin, no. 1462, Copenhagen Zoological Museum, from Axel Heibergs Land, the color of the underparts of which agrees with that of specimens from Greenland. Also the color of the upper parts is decidedly nearer that of animals from Greenland than to that of specimens from Ponds Inlet, Tulican and Gifford River. No other specimens west or south of Greenland suggest intergradation. In Greenland itself, one adult, a female from Turner Sund, East Greenland, has the underparts no more yellowish than in some specimens from Melville Peninsula. This female is darker on the back than any one of the other 10 specimens from Greenland in summer pelage examined at the same time, but even so is not so dark colored as animals from Baffin Island or other islands to the west of Greenland.