34 BRITISH BIRDS. 



search of the North-west Passage, in 1819-20, and who 

 correctly describes the birds,* to have been found 

 breeding, in the summer of 1820, in considerable numbers 

 on the North Georgian or Parry Islands. It was not, 

 however, until 1863 that the first authenticated eggs 

 were found. In that year MacFarlane obtained a single 

 nest, with eggs, near Franklin Bay, on the coast of 

 Arctic America. Since that date eggs from various 

 localities have been obtained in the high northern 

 countries of America and Asia and in Iceland ; t but 

 until the year 1906 the chicks appear to have remained 

 quite unknown, though they appear to have been found 

 on the west coast of Greenland. On August 3rd of the 

 year named, my old friend Dr. Bruce, of Antarctic fame, 

 found a Sanderling accompanied by her brood of four 

 young, a day or two old at the most, on stony ground (a 

 raised beach), about a mile from the sea, and some one 

 hundred feet above its level, in the north-east part of 

 Prince Charles' Foreland, Spitsbergen. This family party 

 he secured, and most patriotically presented it to the 

 collections in the Royal Scottish Museum, where the 

 birds form an attractive mounted group. 



Dr. Bruce 's discovery fills up an important gap in our 

 knowledge of this bird's distribution as a nesting species, 

 since it bridges over the area between the tundras of 

 Siberia and Iceland, and thus completes the chain of 

 evidence that the Sanderling is circumpolar in its range 

 during the breeding season. 



Since Dr. Bruce's specimens were obtained chicks were 

 taken in the summer of 1907 or 1908, by Mr. Manniche 

 during the Danish Expedition to North-east Greenland. 

 This, however, is not a new locality for the Sanderling as 

 a breeding bird, for Dr. Pansch found several nests on 



* Appendix to Parry's First Voyage, p. cxix. 



■(• Although it is extremely probable that the Sanderling has 

 occasionally' bred in Iceland, the evidence is not quite conclusive. 

 There is an egg in the British Museum ascribed to this species which 

 was received from Proctor, and the Rev. H. H. Slater found a nest 

 with incubated eggs, but the parent bird was not shot and the chicks 

 proved to possess a hind toe, which is absent in the adults. — F. C. R. J. 



