Yii.] THE FAUNA OF THE ROCKY ISLAND. 245 



The birds that were killed often had their crops full of the 

 remains of insects, although living at a place where the 

 naturalist has to search for hours to find a dozen gnats or their 

 equals in size, a circumstance that tells very favourably for these 

 birds' power of vision, of locomotion, and of apprehension. It 

 is difficult in any case to understand what it is that attracts this 

 insectivorous bird to one of the regions that is poorest in insect 

 life in the whole world. The glaucous gulls' plunderer, the 

 skua, and its chastiser the bold tern, were also observed, as were a 

 few barnacle geese. On the other hand, no eiders were met with. 

 All the birds named occurred only in inconsiderable numbers, and 



THE VEGA AND LENA MOORED TO AN ICE-FLOE. 



On the morning of the 12th August, 1S7S. (After a drawing by O. Nordquist.) 



there was nothing found here resembling the life which prevails 

 on a Spitzbergen fowl-island. Finally, it may be mentioned 

 that Lieutenant Nordquist found under stones and pieces of 

 drift-wood a few insects, among them a beetle (a staphylinid). 

 Dr. Stuxberg aftenvards found a specimen of the same insect 

 species at Cape Cheljnjskin itself. No beetle is found on Spitz- 

 bergen, though the greater portion of that group of islands is, 

 in respect of climate, soil, and vegetation, much better favoured 

 than the region now in question. This seems to me to show 

 that the insect fauna of Spitzbergen, exceedingly inconsiderable 

 and limited in numbers as it is, has migrated thither in com- 

 paratively recent times, and in how high a degree the migration 



