THE IBIS, 



No. IX. JANUARY 1861. 



I. — List of the Birds hitherto observed in Greenland. By 

 Dr. J. Reinhardt, Professor at the Royal Museum of Copen- 

 hagen, Foreign Member Z. S. L., &c. &c. 



The following list proves of itself how much our knowledge of 

 the Avifauna of Greenland has advanced during the last thirty 

 years ; but I may be permitted to prefix a few remarks on the 

 subject. In his celebrated ' Fauna Groenlandica/ Fabricius enu- 

 merates fifty-four birds; two of them, however, are only the 

 young ones of other species* ; and four (which he inserted with- 

 out having seen them, imagining that he recognized them in the 

 nai-ratives of the Eskimaux) are never met with in that country f- 

 They had better therefore be erased from the list. Thus the 

 actual number of Greenland birds with which ornithologists 

 are acquainted through the labours of Fabricius amounts only 

 to forty-eight. After the publication of the work of this most 

 excellent observer, the Avifauna of Greenland received no ma- 

 terial increase until 1818, when Captain (now General) Edward 

 Sabine added three species to it, in his well-known " Memoir 

 on the Birds of Greenland '' J. About the same time my late 



* Valco fuscus and Anas glaucion. 



t Parus bicolor, Mergus merganser, Larus cinerarius {ridibundus), and 

 Pelecanus cristatus. 



X In the ' Transactions of the Linnean Society,' vol. xii. p. 527. The 

 species added by him are, Tringa canutus, Larus leucopterus (enumerated 

 as L. argentatus, var.), and Xema sabini. Uria bruennichii, described by 

 him as a new species, was already, as shown by Faber (Prodr. der Island. 



VOL. III. B 



