A circumstance which helped to increase the monotony of our drift in the ice during the winter and spring, 1895, was the great scarcity of animal life in that part of the Polar Sea. For long periods at a stretch we did not see a single living thing; even the polar bears, who roam so far, were not to be seen. Hence the appearance in the afternoon of May 7th of a small seal in a newly opened lane, close by the vessel, was hailed with universal delight. It was the first seal that we had set eyes upon since March. Subsequently we often saw seals of the same kind in the open channels, but they were very shy, so that it was not until well on in the summer that we succeeded in killing one, and this was so small that we ate the whole of it at one meal. On May 14th Pettersen told us that he had seen a white bird, as he thought an ice-gull, flying westward. On the 22d Mogstad saw a snow-bunting, which circled round the vessel, and after this the harbingers of spring became daily more numerous. Our hunting-bags, however, were very scanty. It was not until June 10th that we secured the first game, when the doctor succeeded in shooting a fulmar and a kittiwake (Larus tridactylus). True, he prefaced these exploits by sundry misses, but in the end he managed to hit the birds, and "all's well that ends well." As regards the fulmar, it was an exciting chase, as it had only been winged, and took refuge in the open channel. Pettersen was the first to go after it, followed by Amundsen, the doctor, Scott-Hansen, and the whole pack of dogs, and at last they managed to secure it. After this it was a matter of daily occurrence to see birds quite near, and in order to be better able to secure them, and seals to boot, we moored our sealing-boat in the open channel. This was equipped with a sail, and with ballast composed of some of the castings from the windmill; which we had been obliged to take down; and the very first evening after the boat had been put on the water, Scott-Hansen, Henriksen, and Bentzen went for a sail in the channel. The dogs seized this occasion to take some capital exercise. They took it into their heads to follow the boat along the edge of the channel backward and forward as the boat tacked; it was stiff work for them to keep always abreast of it, as they had to make many detours round small channels and bays in the ice, and when at last they had got near it, panting, and with their tongues protruding far from their mouths, the boat would go about, and they had to cover the same ground over again. On June 20th the doctor and I shot one black guillemot each. We also saw some little auks, but the dogs, entering too eagerly into the sport, as a welcome break in the prolonged oppressive solitude and monotony, rushed ahead of us and scared the birds away before we could get a shot at them.