Avifauna of Franz Josef Land. 26 7 



for stones also. On picking up a young bird the parents 

 became quite distracted and threatened us more vehemently 

 than ever. By-and-by vre passed out of this gullery, but 

 further along we could see others, each with many hundreds 

 of these birds, and we advanced towards them. The 

 gullery we left gradually became quiet ; but the birds 

 in the one which we were approaching were beginning to 

 demonstrate in the same way as those at the last. The 

 cries became louder and louder, and in a few minutes we 

 were again in the midst of the deafening shrieks of a host of 

 terrified yet defiant birds. Again they swooped down upon 

 us, and it seemed quite likely that at any moment they 

 might dash into our faces. So we passed on from gullery 

 to gullery among many thousands of these birds. It was 

 a magnificent sight; the sun was shining brightly in a blue 

 sky, the air was clear, and these handsome birds in their 

 pure white plumage added brilliancy to the scene. Each 

 nest is, as I have said, composed of a pile of moss, in shape a 

 truncated cone, and may be from 6 to 9 inches in height and 

 from 18 inches to 2 feet in diameter. There' is no hollow on 

 the top of this more or less level pile, upon which the egg 

 is deposited or the young bird sits. I noticed many dead 

 young birds, some quite recently deceased, for they were 

 still warm, while others had been dead for some time; in 

 nearly every case their crania had been indented. Eight 

 young birds were taken on board alive ; seven of these reached 

 the Thames on September 3rd, 1897, but next day six of 

 these were dead, and the remaining one found its way to the 

 Zoological Society's Gardens at Regent's Park. — W. S. B.] 



16. *RlSSA TRIDACTYLA (LiuU.) . 



Payer, op. cit. ii. p. 90 ; Neale, P. Z. S. 1882, pp. 653, 654 ; 

 Nansen, op. cit. ii. pp. 295, 350, 438. 



Mr. Bruce's representatives of the Kittiwake consist of two 

 chicks taken on the 20th of July, 1897, and a half-grown 

 bird taken a week or two later in August : all from nests at 

 Cape Flora. 



This bird is at least widely, if not generally, distributed 



12 



