WE WALK ACROSS 99 



On this river, the upper waters of the Isbushishna, 

 we saw one pair of bernacle geese. 



Most of my readers will be familiar with the name of 

 this goose, and will connect it with the quaint old idea 

 (which I have seen illustrated in a rare book) that it 

 was hatched out of shells of the common barnacle 

 which grew on trees hanging over the water. This 

 bird, a winter visitor to our (chiefly west) coasts, breeds 

 easily enough in a semi-domestic state ; but where it 

 nests in the wild condition has never been proved. 

 Professor Collett, it is true, records the nesting for 

 several years running of a pair on an island of the 

 Lofotens, but this pair seem to have been as solitary 

 as the instance. 



So it would have been extremely interesting if we 

 could onlv have found a nest. But we failed. This 

 pair with our Gusina five exhausts our list of Kolguev 

 bernacle. 



June 26th. — We walked on through the night till 1.30 

 a.m. It had been a pleasant night. But at one in the 

 morning a chill fog with wind came suddenly on. 



After crossing the last river I had tried to keep 

 to the high orround. But this was so much inter- 

 sected by impassable gullies that we had perforce 

 dropped down. The cold fog drove us up again on 

 to a sandy plateau. 



Here we constructed sleeping-nests. We worked like 



