APPROACH OF WINTER IN THE BALTIC. 409 



made at considerable intervals to our coasts. We 

 know also that the flocks of wildfowl still seen upon 

 the Danish and Dutch coasts in quite recent times are 

 out of all proportion greater than anything witnessed 

 of late years upon the British seaboard. When the 

 waters of the Baltic close with ice in winter, it neces- 

 sarily drives southwards most of the wildfowl that 

 inhabit the Scandinavian and Russian coasts. As a 

 rule however, the Norwegian seaboard remains always 

 clear of ice, except perhaps in some few altogether 

 exceptional winters, when the fjords may perhaps skin 

 over with a thin coating of ice for short periods. 

 That this should be so is a remarkable fact, when the 

 whole of the Baltic coasts every year become closed 

 to navigation by the accumulation of heavy ice. It 

 is not however generally known that the Baltic (as 

 a whole) is not a salt sea, but an inland sea, mainly 

 consisting of fresh water : so that fresh water fish, such 

 as perch and pike, may be taken in every part of the 

 Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, in summer time. 



The salt sea really comes up very little beyond 

 Stockholm. This fact alone therefore will go far to 

 account for the annual closing of these gulfs by ice 

 though there are other considerations, which must not 

 be left out of account, which have already been dis- 

 cussed in these pages, and which undoubtedly exhibit 

 a wonderful example of the way in which Nature brings 

 about apparently inexplicable variations of climate. Thus 

 we find a seaport in the icy ocean, viz., Hammerfest 

 on the north coast of Norway, in Lat. 700 39' i5 x/ N., 

 Long. 230 42' o"E., and the most northern city in the world, 

 maintained permanently free from ice : any interference 

 with navigation by ice being there almost unknown. 



