1898] NOTES AND COMMENTS 371 



the brown bear, the stag and roedeer, elk and reindeer, whereas the 

 naturalist, content with smaller though to him not less interesting 

 game, may trap quite a large number of the European Insectivora 

 and liodentia. To the Pinnipedia, too, Norway is a favoured home. 

 But perhaps the most interesting of Norwegian mammals are the 

 Norway lemming and the beaver — the former on account of its 

 present restricted range and peculiar migrating habits, the latter 

 because of its great rarity as a European mammal. Of both these 

 animals, however. Prof. CoUett has recently given full accounts, to 

 which we have referred in previous volumes. The absence from 

 Norway of such a wide-spread animal as the common brown hare is 

 worth noting again, but this deficiency is compensated for by the 

 presence of a numerous series of interesting Carnivora in the 

 northern lynx, the glutton, the wolf, and the bear. Not by any 

 means the least interesting parts of Prof. Collett's paper are the 

 tables giving the number of these animals killed from the year 1846 

 onwards ; and from these we gather that, whereas the number of 

 wolves killed for the five years 1846-50 was 1120, the correspond- 

 ing number for 1891-98 was only 273. Yet the figures given 

 for the glutton would almost lead us to imagine that this animal 

 had increased of late years, since the number killed during 1846- 

 1870 is considerably less than that given for the years 1871-1895. 

 Certainly the wild Carnivora, at least in Norway, are not becoming 

 extinct at so rapid a rate as many people suppose to be the case. 



Notes on Norwegian Geology 



Prof. C. F. Kolderup makes three geological contributions to 

 Bergens Museums Aaroog for 1897. In the first (" Ekersunds- 

 Soggendalsfeltets bergarter og deres betingelser for anvendelse i 

 stenindustrien "), he points out the practical applications of the 

 rocks that he has previously described from the neighbourhood of 

 Ekersund, in the extreme south-west of Norway. Among these are 

 red, grey, and violet labradorite-rocks, with only trifling admixtures 

 of hypersthene, biotite, and ilmenite ; the red variety seems specially 

 available for commercial purposes, lying as it does upon the actual 

 sea-board. The norites do not stand the weather so well ; they are 

 grey in their fresh state, and include the well-known rock of Hittero. 

 Now that Norwegian granitoid rocks are partially displacing the 

 well-tried Scotch ones in the London market, and are already popu- 

 lar for tombstones, a paper of this kind is very timely, and may 

 even help to assure men of business of the ' practical ' bearings of 

 geological mapping and research. 



The second paper is still more to the point as a sermon to the 

 ' practical ' man ; for it correlates the deficiencies in the bones of 

 cattle in certain parts of the Ekersund area with the small amount 



