Ramble in Lapland. 165 



were the tame animals belonging to the Laps^ but already 

 turned out for the summer. Here they are allowed to roam 

 at large until the autumn^ and such is their instinctive dread 

 of the pestilent mosquito, that they seldom depart from the 

 highest and coldest parts of the fells. When skinning birds 

 to-night I found that both the Temminck^s Stints and the 

 Lapland Buntings had very small embryo eggs in their 

 ovaries. 



June 7tli. On our return to the crag opposite Gulholmen 

 the Ospreys were there, but only one pair of Peregrines. 

 When sitting on the crag-top the female Osprey appeared, 

 carrying a long twisted stick in her talons, her long thighs 

 dangling below her. It was evident that she had a nest 

 and presently we found it, placed on the summit of a de- 

 tached pinnacle of rock projecting from the main crag. It 

 was utterly inaccessible, either from above or below ; but we 

 could see it contained no eggs, although it was lined out with 

 green moss. I afterwards shot the female Osprey, and found 

 that she had very small eggs in her ovary ; the legs and 

 feet as well as the cere were a pale pea-green colour. On tlie 

 8th June I observed the only Chafiinch {Fringilla ccahbs) 

 that I saw whilst in Finmark. 



June 9th. Much snow fell to-day, with a bitterly cold 

 wind. On the sandflats at the junction of the Tana with its 

 fiord were about a hundred Geese, sitting on the bare sand 

 amongst some stranded ice-floes. Adjoining the sandflats 

 and between them and the snow-fjelds, was first a narrow 

 space of rather long grass, with frequent pools of snow-water 

 and then about half a mile of semi-inundated birch-scrub. 

 It was in the grassy parts that I first became acquainted 

 with the Red-throated Pipits [Anthus cervinus) . They seemed 

 retiring in their habits, running rapidly along the ground like 

 a mouse, keeping the body very low and horizontal. They 

 were difficult to see in this position, and if one approached 

 nearer to them, a pair would spring up into the air with a shrill 

 pipe, and allow themselves to be carried by the wind perhaps 

 a hundred yards to leeward, when they would, with jerky 

 flight, beat up again, to rc-alight on their favourite spot. 



