3806 The Zoologist — January, 1874. 



crevice near the new one. We again met with flocks of buntings 

 towards the end of August at North Cape and Phipps's Island. 

 A single bird flesv past us southwards on the J6lh of September, 

 when we were some twenty-nine miles S.W. by W. magnetic of 

 Hope Island. This was not the last we saw of them, for during a 

 lucid interval in sea-sickness I noticed one flying round the ship in 

 lat. 61°, about forty miles N.E. by N. of Shetland. 



Linota linaria, L. (Redpoll). — "On our approach to Spits- 

 bergen, several of this species alighted on different parts of the 

 ship, and were so wearied apparently by being on the wing, though 

 our distance from the land was not above ten miles, that they 

 allowed themselves to be taken alive. How this little creature 

 subsists, and why a bird of such apparent delicacy should resort 

 to such a barren and gelid country, arc questions of some curiosity 

 and difficulty. It must be migratory," &c. (Scoresby, Arct. Reg. 

 i. 537). Nobody but Scoresby having claimed to have found a 

 redpoll in Spitsbergen, the statements cited above have been sup- 

 posed by general consent to apply to the snow bunting. And yet 

 when we found a redpoll in lat. 75° 13' N. at the Western Ice, as 

 has been previously stated, we began to suspect that Scoresby after 

 all might be correct in his observations. In the evening of the 

 Sixth Sunday after Trinity, I went ashore in Wiide Bay with 

 James Kidd. He took my gun, as 1 wauled some ptarmigan, and 

 we thought we might fall in with deer. On landing we first 

 worked eastward, not far from the shore, where patches of moss 

 and willow encouraged us to look for plants and insects; but we 

 found little besides a few common things and some spiders. So 

 we gradually took ground to the kft, ascending the slope of the 

 hills, and passing by a lakelet, made our way into the next valley. 

 There we saw two pairs of long-tailed skuas, the first we had met 

 with in the country. Kidd went after them, but they flew away 

 out of sight up the opposite mountain. We then proceeded along 

 the foot of the western side of the valley until it met a range of 

 lofty clifls too steep to be ascended, which extended to and beside 

 the inevitable glacier a little further on, and helped to confine it. 

 A slope of broken rocks was above us, up which we scrambled 

 until we reached the higher ground again, frequently pausing in 

 our ascent, — of course to admire the view. Ptarmigan were the 

 objects of our quest, and we presently came upon a hen with her 

 brood. We wanted the old cock ; and as soon as Kidd had caught 



