NATURAL HISTORY IN ICELAND ^ 



By JiTLiAN Huxley, F. R. S. 



In Iceland, in the summer of 1949, a number of new facts and ex- 

 periences, interesting and exciting to a naturalist, came my way — 

 some of them through my own eyes, others through the mouths of 

 the able Icelandic zoologists who put so much of their time and 

 knowledge at the disposition of James Fisher and myself. 



Thus we saw various species that were new to us, and sometimes 

 spectacular to look at, like the harlequin duck. That was exciting 

 enough; but the interest was multiplied when we remembered that 

 it is an essentially North American bird, one of the rarest stragglers 

 to Europe, and yet here breeding close to familiar British ducks like 

 mallard, tufted duck, widgeon, and pintail. We found a meadow 

 pipit breeding in a wood, like a tree pipit, instead of on the custom- 

 ary open heath; and what is more, singing a song halfway to a tree 

 pipit's. 



We saw some local birds recognizably different from their British 

 congeners, like the Iceland redshank, which is several shades darker 

 than ours. We saw a painted lady butterfly in the northern half of 

 the island — a truly astonishing sight, since its nearest permanent 

 breeding place is the south of France. We got evidence, from our 

 own counts, of the increase of the gannet; and from our Icelandic 

 colleagues of the fact that not only it but 9 or 10 other birds have 

 been rapidly extending their range northward during recent decades. 



But the modern naturalist is not content unless he can relate his 

 facts, however valuable, and his isolated experiences, however ex- 

 citing, to general principles; and the very vividness and novelty of 

 the impressions made by an unfamiliar country will set his scientific 

 imagination to work. Here is the result of my own case — some of the 

 ways in which Iceland's natural history illustrates or illuminates 

 evolutionary biology in general. 



Undoubtedly the most exciting of these has to do with the world- 

 wide change of climate now in progress : but this I shall keep to the 

 last. 



The most obvious point is the paucity of bird species in general, and 

 of passerines (song birds, etc.) in particular. Thus the number of 

 regular breeding species in Iceland is only a little over a third of that 



' Reprinted by permission from Discovery, vol. 21, No. 3, March 1950. 



922758—51 22 327 



