﻿NORWEGIAN LEPIDOPTERA. 311 



what I heard at Aarnes, that the northern portion will follow 

 suit very shortly. 



On June 8th, the weather having temporarily broken up, I 

 returned to Christiania, and calling upon the tourist agents 

 respecting my passage to the far north, found I was confronted 

 with a state of atfairs which threatened to wreck my expedition 

 at its outset. It appears there had been for some time dissatis- 

 faction amongst the engine men on the Norwegian coasting 

 steamers, and a strike of the whole of them was then imminent ; 

 the last steamer that would go north for an unknown period 

 having left Bergen the previous evening. This was not a plea- 

 sant prospect and required consideration ; but I finally decided to 

 risk being stranded somewhere in the vicinity of the North Cape 

 indefinitely, and taking the night express for Trondhjem, caught 

 the Bergen steamer, the * Richard With,' there early on the 

 morning of June 9th, and sailed in her to Hammerfest, where 

 we arrived in the small hours of the 12th. 



Here the strike had taken effect, and the local steamers were 

 all lying in a melancholy row in the harbour, with crews paid 

 off, and fires raked out. For some time after my arrival I was 

 nonplussed, and how to get to my destination, Bossekop, in the 

 Alten Fjord, some fifty miles distant, I did not know. Fortunately 

 I had heard whilst on board the ' Richard With ' that there was 

 a military station somewhere in the Alten Fjord, and coming 

 across an army officer in the street, with whom I had travelled 

 on the steamer from Trondhjem, I ventured to explain to him 

 my dilemma, and my troubles were at once at an end for 

 the time being, for this gentleman, who I afterwards found 

 was the commander of the battalion in the Province of Fin- 

 marken, Oberstloitenant Nyquist, with the kindness and obliging- 

 ness which are inborn in a Norwegian, insisted that I should conle 

 as the guest of himself and a brother officer in a motor-boat 

 they had chartered, and in which they were proceeding to Alten. 

 We left Hammerfest about noon and reached Bossekop shortly 

 before midnight, my hosts most kindly landing me there before 

 proceeding to their destination. After some difficulty I got 

 myself and my luggage to the small hotel, but the good people 

 were gone to bed and I did not get any supper that night. 



At Bossekop I remained until June 23rd, on which day, 

 taking advantage of the presence of a cargo motor-boat, I pre- 

 vailed upon the captain to allow me to travel in her back to 

 Hammerfest. 



Bossekop and the Alten Fjord are by far the best known 

 localities for Lepidoptera in Arctic Norway. Zetterstedt was 

 there in the first half of the last century, and in 1860 Drs. 

 Staudinger and Wocke collected from May until August, A very 

 complete account of the locality by Staudinger is to be found in 

 the ' Entomologists' Annual ' for the year 1864, and the record 



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