3812 The Zoologist — January, 1874. 



about two feet from the ground. On the I5th of June our men 

 took some eggs, which they found on the shore in Dane's Gat. 

 Burgomasters stand in some awe of snow-birds on ice, and are 

 rather afraid of "mollies" in the water. Time was (we read in a 

 certain arctic author) when mollies were apt to fall into violent 

 hysterics, and even to die outright through fear, if a burgomaster 

 so much as opened his mouth in paying his attentions to them, the 

 harshness of his voice being rather too much for their delicate nerves. 

 I am happy to be able to affirm that since the days when this sort 

 of things used to go on, a great change has been effected for the 

 better in the relations subsisting between these two classes of the 

 Spitsbergen community. The mollies of the period no longer 

 surrender themselves unconditionally to the first burgomaster who 

 may be pleased to make up to them, no matter how loudly he may 

 give utterance to the feelings which he cannot suppress. Nor 

 are the burgomasters quite so much addicted to bluster as their 

 ancestors. All this is clearly attributable to the agency of Natural 

 Selection. The hysterical mollies evidently could uot have had 

 any descendants to whom their qualities could be transmitted ; 

 because they all died of fright. The race was therefore per- 

 petuated only through the Hue of the stronger-minded ones. The 

 burgomasters of the day, finding that these were not very much 

 afraid of them, had the sense to lay aside most of their swagger 

 and adopt in its stead a more gentle and quiet demeanour. Where 

 we still meet with individual instances of overbearing pomposity and 

 bullyism, or of sentimental affectation, may we not fairly account 

 for their existence on the principle of Ancestral Reversion ? 



Stercorarius povialorhhius, Temm. (Pomarine Skua). — The first 

 skua in the list was the last species obtained by us. The chief 

 engineer, Mr. William Forbes, shot it for me near Cape Oetker, in 

 Hinlopen Straits, on the 13th of August. Five others were after- 

 wards killed by our men in the same neighbourhood, some of them 

 in immature plumage ; and we could have obtained almost as many 

 as we pleased when we were lying off Low Laud. They are scarce 

 on the western coast of Spitsbergen ; only one was seen by us in 

 Magdalena Bay, and that was on the Cth of September or there- 

 abouts. On the 13lh and the loth of Sepember I saw a few on and 

 near Hope Island. When the boatswains were chasing kitliwakes 

 and snow-birds one day in Hinlopen Straits, in their usual way, 

 I saw one seize a snow-bird by the tail and hold fast to it. Down 



