608 ALAlJDlDiE. 



than in others, since the examples which occur in this 

 country are no doubt natives of Europe. Though it was 

 not recognized as a Scandinavian bird until 1837 *, it is 

 abundant in certain localities in that part of Norway, 

 Sweden, Finland and Russia known as Lapland, and it 

 may even eventually prove to inhabit the higher mountains 

 of their more southern districts. Wolley informed Mr. 

 Hewitson that it bred on the high lands of the interior of 

 that country, having indeed procured two nests from the 

 mountains above Mukka-uoma in 1854, and that in autumn 

 flocks of this bird are to be seen in the corn-fields, like Sky- 

 larks elsewhere, on their way southward along the course of 

 the rivers. But still further to the north-east, in East Fin- 

 mark and especially on the shores of the Yaranger Fjord, he, 

 and the Editor in his company, found it very common, and 

 more numerous in the cultivated lands and meadows near 

 the sea than on the hills. Trustful and tame, it would 

 also resort familiarly to the neighbourhood of houses, and 

 even enter the open streets of the village in search of its 

 food. " It was very delightful," he writes, " to hear it 

 singing as it sat on a post, or on a rail, or a barn top. At 

 one house where I was staying, it used to come on the roof 

 soon after midnight, and sing for several hours in the cool 

 sunshine." The nests, of which many were found, were 

 placed in a depression of the ground, often near a stone, but 

 generally without any sheltering herbage near them. They 

 are slight in structure, consisting of a few little twigs and 

 plant-stalks, as an outwork protecting a mass of sheep-grass, 

 and are lined with tufts of rein-deer hair and down from the 



* Prof. Nilsson, in 1835, suggesteil the probability of its discovery there, which 

 was made two years later by Prof. Loven (Yet. Acad. Handl. 1840, p. 41) in East 

 Finmark. The former has since urged that the bird has but recently established 

 itself in Scandinavia as a colonist from the eastward, but this idea is opposed by 

 Prof. Sundevall, who believes that its existence had hitherto been overloolied, 

 citing in support of his opinion Klein's recorded occurrence of the species near 

 Danzig in 1667 and 1747 (Hist. Av. Prodr. pp. 72, 156). This author, knowing 

 only that tlie bird had been described by Catesby as American, imagined his 

 examples had been driven by a storm to Norway and thence found their way to 

 the old Hans-town. Frisch however had in 1739 figured it from an example 

 obtained in Brandenburg. 



