“When the Greenland Dogs die off, the Greenlander must become extinct: more certainly even than must the ‘Plain’ Indian when the last Buffalo is shot. It is impossible for him to drag home the Seals, Sharks, White Whales, or Narwhals which he may have shot in the winter at the ‘strom-holes’ in the ice without his Dogs; or for the wild native in the far North to make his long migrations, with his family and household goods, from one hunting-ground to another without these domestic animals of his. Yet that sad event seems to be not far distant. Several years ago, a curious disease, the nature of which has puzzled veterinarians, appeared among the Arctic Dogs, from high up in Smith’s Sound down the whole coast of Greenland to Jakobshavn (69° 13′ N. lat.), where the ice-fjord stops it from going farther south; and the Government uses every endeavour to stop its spread beyond that barrier by preventing the native Dogs north and south from commingling. Kane and Hayes lost most of their Dogs through this disease; and at every settlement in Danish Greenland the natives are impoverished through the death of their teams. It is noticed that whenever a native loses his Dogs he goes very rapidly down-hill in the sliding scale of Arctic respectability, becoming a sort of hanger-on of the fortunate possessor of a sledge-team. “During the latter portion of our stay in Jakobshavn, scarcely a day elapsed during which some of the Dogs were not ordered to be killed, on account of their having caught this fatal epidemic. “The Dog is seized with madness, bites at all other Dogs, and even at human beings. It is soon unable to swallow its food, and constipation ensues. It howls loudly during the continuance of the disease, but generally dies in the course of a day, with its teeth firmly transfixing its tongue. It has thus something of the nature of hydrophobia, but differs from that disease in not being communicable by bite, though otherwise contagious among Dogs. The Government sent out a veterinary surgeon to investigate the nature of the distemper; but he failed to suggest any remedy, and it is now being ‘stamped out’ by killing the Dogs whenever seized--a heroic mode of treatment, which will only be successful when the last Dog becomes extinct in Greenland.”