THE SNOW BUNTING. 297 
and small shell-fish, and become, during their stay here, 
very fat, and are accounted as delicate eating by epicures, 
for whose tables they are killed in great numbers. 
The following interesting account of the habits of this 
species is by Wilson. It is partly compiled from the observa- 
tions of Mr. Pennant : — 
“ These birds,” says Mr. Pennant, “inhabit, not only Greenland, 
but even the dreadful climate of Spitzbergen, where vegetation is 
nearly extinct, and scarcely any but 
cryptogamous plants are found. It 
_therefore excites wonder, how birds 
which are graminivorous in every 
other than those frost-bound regions 
subsist, yet are there found in great 
flocks, both on the land and ice of - 
Spitzbergen. They annually pass 
to this country by way of Norway ; 
for, in the spring, flocks innumer- 
able appear, especially on the Nor- = 
wegian isles, continue only three ~ 
weeks, and then at once disappear. 
As they do not breed in Hudson’s 
Bay, it is certain that many retreat 
to this last of lands, and totally uninhabited, to perform, in full 
security, the duties of love, incubation, and nutrition. That they 
breed in Spitzbergen is very probable; but we are assured that 
they do so in Greenland. They arrive there in April, and make 
their nests in the fissures of the rocks on the mountains in May: 
the outside of their nest is grass, the middle of feathers, and the 
lining the down of the arctic fox. They lay five eggs, — white, 
spotted with brown: they sing finely near their nest. 
“They are caught by the boys in autumn, when they collect 
near the shores in great flocks, in order to migrate, and are eaten 
dried. 
“In Europe, they inhabit, during summer, the most naked Lap- 
land alps; and descend in rigorous seasons into Sweden, and fill the 
roads and fields, —on which account the Dalecarlians call them 
