CHAPTER VI 



VISIT TO SPITZBERGEN 



THOUGH the emoluments of the Drue Drury Fellowship 

 were very meagre, Newton continued to do what was 

 considered in those days a considerable amount of 

 travelling. After he was elected to the Fellowship in 

 1855 he had visited, as we have seen, Lapland, the West 

 Indies, Boston, and Iceland. In the autumn of 1859 he 

 went, by way of Paris, where he saw the Jardin des 

 Plantes, to Copenhagen, to see his brother Francis Rodes 

 Newton. 



This was merely a visit of pleasure, and he records in 

 a letter to his brother Edward a hunting party of a kind 

 which is now extinct. 



One day we went over to Saroe to assist at a chasse. 

 Frank was made to take a gun and killed his only objet, 

 a roe-deer. There were 17 guns and about 50 beaters, 

 the latter armed with clappers. They drove a large 

 extent of forest, the guns being placed at " Stations," 

 but the bag was limited : 5 Roedeer, 3 Hares, and 12 

 Foxes ! It was worth seeing once. All the " hunters ' 

 got up extensively with game bags, couteaux de chasse, 

 etc. If a man comes late he gets fined, and so also if 

 he doesn't hold his gun up, misses a shot, shoots what 

 is not game, etc. Everything is conducted according to 

 rule, and people look as grave about it as if they were at 

 a funeral. The head forester reads out the return after 

 each drive, and at the end of the day announces the 

 fines. A fat Swedish Count was very heavily mulcted 

 for killing a Brown Owl.* 



* Letter to Edward Newton, October 13, 1859. 

 73 



