warm hollows, that indent the slopes of North Cape towards the 

 south, find a couple of well-known species of birds, which 

 attend us in all parts of the land. One of these is the Cuckoo, 

 which in these regions entrusts its eggs to the Pipits and the 

 Wheatear; the other is the Willow- Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), 

 which, in the highest willow thicket that even here manages to 

 sustain life, executes its somewhat tedious song as indefati- 

 gably as it does in the beech-woods of Central Europe. Its nest, 

 as round as a ball, and which in these storm-vexed parts is large 

 and fluffy, is lined with a handful of the white winter-feathers of 

 Willow Grouse. Its relation, the Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus rufus), 

 on the contrary, hardly goes further north than Saltdalen, only a 

 little way beyond the Arctic circle. 



We quit the plateau again, and go slowly down through the 

 steep cleft in the mountain, where the path winds among loose 

 stones and snow-fields. From high up the precipice are heard 

 the melancholy notes of a solitary bird, which sound almost 

 like the cry of a young bird separated from its mother. That 

 is the Ring Ouzel (Turdus torquatus], which sings to his mate, 

 whilst she is sitting on her brown-speckled eggs under a tussock 

 of grass up on the mountain, or is engaged in rearing her young. 

 The most emphatically Arctic representative in the group of 

 small birds, is the Snow Bunting (Plectrophanes nivalis). On the 

 precipice of North Cape, and on the stacks furthest out to sea, 

 upon the plateaux in the interior, and upon the archipelagoes 

 of the Arctic Ocean, everywhere one finds scattered pairs of 

 these birds established, whose simple summer plumage, composed 

 of pure black and pure white, harmonises so remarkably with 

 the ground that they have chosen to inhabit. From one of 

 the dark boulders, alternating with the snow-drifts which the 

 short summer is unable to thaw, or from the highest point of 

 such a snow-field, the male during the nesting season sings his 

 pretty and variable song, sounding quite cheerful in the dreary 

 surroundings ; then he flies down among the stones, and comes 

 back shortly with his beak full of insects, especially of the large 

 Cranefly (Tipula), to feed his sitting mate or the young under 

 the slab of stone. 



We have again reached the foot of the Cape, where our 



