VIII 



CASES OF ADAPTATION 



139 



But this was quite at the beginning of the season, and 

 he adds : 



" We were told that this pest of mosquitoes was nothing as yet 

 to what it would become later. 'Wait a while,' said our Job's 

 comforter, ' and you will not be able to see each other at twenty 

 paces' distance ; you will not be able to aim with your gun, for the 

 moment you raise your barrel half a dozen regiments of mosquitoes 

 will rise between you and the sight.'" 



And Mr. Seebohm described how he was protected by 



Fig. 16. — Messrs. Seebohm and Harvie-Brown 

 watching Grey Plover through a Cloud of Mosquitoes. 



india-rubber boots and cavalry gauntlets, and a carefully 

 constructed cage over his head, without which he never dare 

 go out on the tundra (see Fig. 15). 



Now this Arctic country, beyond the limit of forests 

 and stretching to the Polar ocean, which is buried for eight 

 or nine months under six feet thick of snow, is yet, during 

 its short summer, a very paradise for birds of all kinds, 

 which flock to it from all over Europe and Central Asia in 

 order to breed and to rear their young ; and it is very largely, 

 and for many species almost exclusively, this very abund- 

 ance of mosquitoes and their larvae that is the chief 

 attraction. In Mr. Seebohm's works, already quoted, and 

 in his fine volume on the Geographical Distribution of the 

 Plovers and Allied Birds, he gives a most graphic account 

 of this country and of the birds flocking to it, which is 



