NOTES OF A NATURALIST ON SPITZBEKGEN. 329 



small sea-birds at so great an elevation was a wonderful sight; 

 but their eggs were unattainable. Shot several specimens off the 

 craig face at a ' dizzy height.' Next found a few Gray Geese 

 breeding on a rocky slope above a morass, and secured five old 

 birds (pink-footed), besides several young alive. Arctic Skuas, 

 Rottges. Another party had gone up the Fjord by boat and 

 bagged a lot of Eider Ducks, Glaucous and Ivory Gulls, Skuas, 

 and the commoner sea-birds. We also found an old coffin dis- 

 interred by bears, with the remains of some poor whaler still 

 inside. The steamer was now full of ducks and geese, Ivory and 

 Glaucous Gulls, &c." In his summary of the birds seen, 

 Chapman somewhat modifies the statement about the Ivory Gulls 

 nesting, as follows : — " I think a pair was breeding at Rottges 

 Hill, Magdalena Bay, but the craig was inaccessible, and all 

 attempts to scale it were fruitless." The Little Auks, he told 

 me at the time, were also breeding high up — up to the very top 

 (say 2000 feet). Briinnich's and a few Black Guillemots were 

 also breeding there, " also a pair or two of Ivory Gulls, and 

 Glaucous," as I wrote it down at the time from his verbal 

 account. Little Auks were carrying fish up, so doubtless had 

 young hatched. Some Pink-footed Geese were observed flying 

 about (probably three pairs), and on searching they found the 

 young in down running about on the snow. Six young ones were 

 caught, five being brought on board alive, but the last died within 

 about forty-eight hours. At the bottom of the precipitous part 

 of the mountain, at the top of the talus, was a very large 

 quantity of their feathers and droppings, as if they had bred 

 there and taken the goslings on being hatched to the bog lower 

 down. Five old birds were killed (as before stated) ; two or three 

 of them were unable to fly, the quill-feathers having moulted out. 

 Snow Buntings seen, and a pair of Richardson's Skuas. No old 

 cock bunting observed, but a brood of young ones below where 

 the geese bred. Petrels as usual. There were scores of cai'casses 

 of White Whales stranded in the shallow water close to the shore, 

 and although the skipper of the schooner we had seen in here on 

 our previous visit was carrying home a skeleton for me to 

 Troinso (which I have since presented to the Oxford Museum), I 

 thought I might as well try and get one for myself, but on 

 landing and examining them I found that they were all imperfect, 

 the bones of the flippers having been in every case cut away by 



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