418 PINICOLA ENUCLEATOR. 



well-known figure in a boat approaching our strand. I had scarcely 

 shouted welcome before his wallet was in my hand, and my English 

 friends [Mr. Hudleston and the editor] were in triumphal procession 

 to the house. First made its appearance a grim wolf's head [now in 

 the Cambridge Museum] ; then came forth some rein-deer gad-flies ; 

 next there was extracted an unknown nest ; then a skinned Pine- 

 Grosbeak ; and, at last, were carefully unwrapped from a little case 

 the wished for eggs, and there they lay in all their fresh discovered 



beauty before us 



At midsummer a nest was found with four fully-fledged young, 

 about a hundred yards from the spot where the former nest had 

 been. It is now in the British Museum. Externally it is made of 

 remarkably open work of twigs and roots, generally in very long 

 pieces. In the centre of the platform there is an inner bedding of 

 barkless, fibrous roots, with a little of the hair-like lichen which 

 grows so abundantly on trees in Lapland forests. 



[These paragraphs are the ouly extracts, printed by Mr. Hewitson in May 1856 

 (Egi^s of Brit. Birds, ed. 3, pp. 210* et secj. ), from the kinger communication on 

 the subject made to him by Mr. Wolley before the season of 185G. Unfortunately 

 they do not tell the story of the latter's many unsuccessful attempts to obtain 

 eggs of this species during his second summer in Lapland (that cf 1854), nor can 

 I supply the deficiency. At that time few, if any, British ornithologists, Mr. Lloyd 

 (Scandinaviau Adventures, ii. p. 324) excepted, thought its eggs had been dis- 

 covei'ed ; but there can be no doubt that in 1821 Prof. Zetterstedt found, as he 

 himself tells us in his Travels in Lapland, published the following year {Sesa yenom 

 Sweriyes och Norriges Lappinarker, i. p. 243;, at least two nests near Juckisjiirvi, 

 on the 20th and 30th of June re-pectively. Nilsson, in all the editions of 

 his 8kan(li7iavisk Fauna (from 1824 to lh'58), refers to the passage in Zetterstedt's 

 book, and partly quotes his description of the eggs, but gives him no credit for 

 the discovery, to which, so far as I know, he was certainly entitled ^ In 1829 

 justice was done to Zetterstedt by Thienemann in his earlier work {Fortjyflanzung 

 der Vogel Europas^ Abth. iii. p. 29), though he did not therein figure an ^gu 

 as he subsequently did in his larger one {Fortpflavziingngeschichte der gesammten 

 Vogel, tab. xxxvi. fig. 1, p. 418) ; and he then said he had never compared but five 

 specimens ^. In this country authentic examples were certainly unknown before 

 Mr. Wolley's time, and he only became aware of Zetterstedt's having anticipated 



* [In the prefiice {Forstal) to his edition of 1824, Nilsson takes exception to 

 many of Zetterstedt's statements, and, in particular, t ) that wherein he declares 

 Teniminck to have been wrong in describing the eggs of this bird as white, arguing 

 that birds' eggs vary much in colour.] 



* [The eggs previously figured, or misfigured, by Schinz {Nester und Eier der 

 Vogel, u. s. w. ii. p. 100, Taf. 8G. figg. 15, 16) were, as Thienemann tells us, laid in 

 captivity.] 



