X BIEDS OF ICELAND 



Mr. W. G. Lock. It is undated, but was published, I 

 believe, early in the eighties. As far as topography 

 and outfit are concerned, it is very good, but I must 

 warn the intending visitor against placing too implicit 

 a reliance upon the amount of sport which it will 

 otherwise induce him to expect everywhere — and also 

 against considering it a competent ornithological guide. 

 Two birds are mentioned (with Latin names too !) — the 

 Great Snipe and Bean Goose — of which the former has 

 never even been suggested by any ornithologist as 

 occurring in Iceland, and the latter has never been 

 satisfactorily ascertained to do so. And Mr. Lock has 

 been so completely misled by the variations, seasonal 

 and sexual, in the plumage of the Kock Ptarmigan (the 

 only wild Gallinaceous bird in Iceland) as to assert, 

 quite erroneously, that the Willow Grouse and Common 

 Ptarmigan are to be found there, besides a variety of 

 hybrid forms. This sort of statement is apt to discount 

 the value of any book seriously — and it would have been 

 quite easy for the writer to find out what competent 

 ornithologists had written. Another and much slighter 

 guide-book has since appeared, in which all these mis- 

 statements are copied and stereotyped. The bird-lore 

 in Sir Eichard Burton's Ultima Tlmdc is also untrust- 

 worthy. That writer goes astray on the subject of 

 the Eock Ptarmigan too (vol. i. p. 172), and probably 

 led the writers of the guide-books off the road. He 

 also suggests Bewick's Swan as an Icelandic bird 

 (ii. 313), of which no evidence whatever exists; and by 

 speaking of ' Sulci Bassana ' in one line and * Sula alba ' 



