18 
friend, the Conchologist, has seized the opportunity to hunt out 
from under the stones and among the tussocks of flowering Silene 
acaulis, Cevastium alpinum, Rhodiola, and Viscaria alpina, a some- 
what varied Fauna of Insects and Land-Molluscs,* which this 
soil, only free from snow for three short months in the year, is yet 
able to produce. 
And by the edge of the sea, among the large stones, we are 
greeted at our departure by a pair of Rock-Pipits (Anthus 
obscurvus), the only species of its family (which includes the 
Wagtails), which passes the winter with us. 
We leave North Cape behind us and find ourselves in 
Porsanger Fjord, the first of the large Fjords of the Arctic 
Ocean, which cuts inwards to a depth of eighteen geographical 
miles into the mainland of Finmarken. The shores of all these 
Fjords resemble each other, and the same characteristics repeat 
themselves more or less in them all. The mountains here are 
lower, most frequently naked and rounded; the coast is often level 
and flat, andas arule clothed with vegetation; either with ling, 
alternating with willow scrub and tracts of swamp, or where 
there are permanent inhabitants, interspersed with small green 
plots of meadow. 
But on these heather-clad and boggy shores, and in the 
bottoms of the valleys, which in nearly every place are clothed 
with vigorous birch-woods and the most luxuriant growth of 
grass, there are spots where the naturalist will find a bird and 
insect fauna so rich and peculiar that it can be exceeded in 
few other places in the country. 
Such a place is S—— T——. The island is only a Nor- 
wegian square mile in extent,t and quite low; its surface, 
rubbed smooth in the glacial epoch, and very slightly undulated, 
is treeless, but covered with a thick layer of peat, overgrown 
with short plants and heather, among which, here and there 
gleams the reflection of water. 
* Such as Conatus fulvus, Vitrina angelice, Arion subfuscus,and Alea arctica. 
+ About 74 English miles. — 7vans/. 
