378 THE zoologist. 



Stint, in full winter dress, was shot at Blakeney on the 17th. 

 On the 27th of October a Green Sandpiper and some Sanderlings 

 were seen at Cley, and about the second week in November two 

 Purple Sandpipers were shot at the same place. Another example 

 of this Sandpiper was killed on Yarmouth beach on the 3rd of 

 December. 



NOTES OF A NATURALIST ON THE WEST COAST OF 



SPITZBERGEN. 



By Alfred Heneage Cocks, MA., F.Z.S. 



(Continued from p. 332.) 



July 31st. The two " Fangst-baad,"* which had started 

 soon after the ' Pallas ' anchored yesterday afternoon with a 

 shooting-party, returned early this morning, with three Ringed 

 Seals, sixteen Brent Geese, some Eiders, &c. Chapman and I, 

 with others (in all four Englishmen and four Norwegians), started 

 at 5 a.m. in a ship's boat, and rowed north, intending to land on 

 the north coast of Van Mijen's Bay (somewhere in the direction 

 of Coal Mountain), for reindeer hunting, but found the north 

 shore lined for a depth of perhaps five miles with compact ice, in 

 front of which huge detached pieces were rushing out of the bay 

 with a strong ebb tide, grinding and crushing against each other 

 in a way that rendered it impossible for us to penetrate the 

 struggling masses in a small boat. On the way we pushed 

 through much loose ice, and on one piece we found a Ringed 

 Seal sleeping, which allowed of our approach within one hundred 

 yards without moving, when it was shot by one of the party clean 

 through the head, so that it died instantaneously, without having 



* A "Fangst-baad," literally hunting-boat, and usually translated 

 Wali-us-boat, or Sealing-boat, is a build of boat peculiar, I believe, to the 

 Tromso and Hamrnerfest walrus-hunters, and is a very different affair to an 

 ordinary ship's boat, but is more like a whale-boat, and sharp at both ends. 

 It is propelled by two or three pahs of sculls (not oars as used in most sea- 

 boats), and steered by stroke, who pits facing forwards when accuracy of 

 steering is desirable, but where pace rather than exact direction is required, 

 turns himself round and sculls in the ordinary position, face to the stern. 

 The harpooner, as in whaling, rows bow. The sculls are very short, and the 

 whole boat is, for a sea-boat, very light. It carries a mast, with sprit-sail 

 and foresail. 



