i8 



friend, the Conchologist, has seized the opportunity to hunt out 

 from under the stones and among the tussocks of flowering Silent 

 acaulis, Cerastium alpimtm, Rhodiola, and Viscavia alpina, a some- 

 what varied Fauna of Insects and Land-Molluscs,' 1 ' which this 

 soil, only free from snow for three short months in the year, is yet 

 able to produce. 



And by the edge of the sea, among the large stones, we are 

 greeted at our departure by a pair of Rock- Pipits (Anthus 

 obscurus), the only species of its family (which includes the 

 Wagtails), which passes the winter with us. 



We leave North Cape behind us and find ourselves in 

 Porsanger Fjord, the first of the large Fjords of the Arctic 

 Ocean, which cuts inwards to a depth of eighteen geographical 

 miles into the mainland of Finmarken. The shores of all these 

 Fjords resemble each other, and the same characteristics repeat 

 themselves more or less in them all. The mountains here are 

 lower, most frequently naked and rounded ; the coast is often level 

 and flat, and as a rule clothed with vegetation; either with ling, 

 alternating with willow scrub and tracts of swamp, or where 

 there are permanent inhabitants, interspersed with small green 

 plots of meadow. 



But on these heather-clad and boggy shores, and in the 

 bottoms of the valleys, which in nearly every place are clothed 

 with vigorous birch-woods and the most luxuriant growth of 

 grass, there are spots where the naturalist will find a bird and 

 insect fauna so rich and peculiar that it can be exceeded in 

 few other places in the country. 



Such a place is S T . The island is only a Nor- 

 wegian square mile in extent, f and quite low ; its surface, 

 rubbed smooth in the glacial epoch, and very slightly undulated, 

 is treeless, but covered with a thick layer of peat, overgrown 

 with short plants and heather, among which, here and there 

 gleams the reflection of water. 



* Such as Conatus fichus, Vitrina angelicce, Arion stibfuscus, and Alcea arctica. 

 t About 7j English miles. Transl. 



