182 
NATURE 
[ Dec. 22, 1881 
and long tail-feathers. It is /adden, the common skua 
(Lestris parasitica, L.), known by the Norwegian walrus- 
hunters under the name of ¢/x/jo, derived from the bird's 
ery, ‘/-0 7-0, and its shameless thief nature. When the 
‘tjufjo’ sees a kittiwake or a glaucous gull fly off with a 
shrimp, a fish, or a piece of blubber, it instantly attacks 
it. It flies with great swiftness backwards and forwards 
around its victim, striking it with its bill, until the 
attacked bird either drops what it has caught, which is 
then immediately snapped up by the skua, or else settles 
down upon the surface of the water, where it is protected 
against attack. The skua besides eats eggs of other 
birds, especially of eiders and geese. If the eggs are left 
but for a few moments unprotected in the nest it is im- 
mediately to the front and shows itself so voracious that 
it is not afraid to attack nests from which the hatching 
birds have been frightened away by men engaged in 
gathering eggs only a few yards off. With incredible 
dexterity it pecks a hole in the eggs and sucks their con- 
tents. If speed is necessary this takes place so quickly 
and out of so many eggs in succession that it sometimes 
has to stand without moving, unable to fly further until it 
has thrown up what it has swallowed. The skua in this 
way commonly takes part in the plundering of every eider 
island. The walrus-hunters are very much embittered 
against the bird on account of this intrusion on _ their 
industry, and kili it whenever they can. The whalers 
called it ‘ struntjaeger ’—refuse-hunter—because they be- 
lieved that it hunted gulls in order to make them void their 
excrements, which ‘struntjaegeren’ was said to devourasa 
luxury. The skua breeds upon low, unsheltered, often water- 
drenched headlands and islands, where it lays one or two 
eggs on the bare ground, often without trace of a nest. 
The eggs are so like the ground that it is only with diffi- 
culty that they can be found. The male remains in the 
neighbourhood of the nest during the hatching season, If 
a main, or an animal which the bird considers dangerous, 
approaches the eggs, the pair endeavour to draw attention 
from them by removing from the nest, creeping on the 
ground and flapping their wings in the most pitiful way. 
The bird thus acts with great skill a veritable comedy, but 
takes good care that it is not caught.” 
Again he tells us of the snow-bunting : 
** During excursions in the interior of the land along 
the coast, one often hears, near heaps of stones or shat- 
tered cliffs, a merry twitter. It comes from an old 
acquaintance from the home land, the sxoesparyfven or 
snoelaerkan, the snow-bunting (Zmderiza nivalis, L.). 
The name is well chosen, for in winter this pretty bird 
lives as far south as the snow goes on the Scandinavian 
peninsula, and in summer betakes itself to the snow limit 
in Lapland, the ¢zzdra of North Siberia, or the coasts of 
Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. It there builds its 
carefully-constructed nest of grass, feathers, and down, 
deep in a stone heap, preferably surrounded by a grassy 
plain. The air resounds with the twitter of the little gay 
warbler, which makes the deeper impression because it is 
the only true bird’s song one hears in the highest 
north.’”* 
Then Baron Nordenskjéld goes on to do for the mam- 
malia the same service he has done for the birds, be- 
ginning with the reindeer. It thrives as far north as 80° 
and 81°, and in a temperature of — 40° to — 50° C. 
“Tt is remarkable that the reindeer, notwithstanding 
the devastating pursuit to which it is exposed on Spitz- 
bergen,” is found there in much larger numbers than on 
* There are, however, various other song-birds found already on south 
Novaya Zemlya, for instance, dappsparfven, the Lapland bunting (Zmderiza 
Zapponica, L.), and berglaerkan, the shore-lark (Adanda alpestris, L.). 
They hatch on the ground under bushes, tufts of grass, or stones, in very 
carefully constructed nests lined with cottun-grass and feathers, aud are not 
uncommod, 
2 The hunters fron Tromsoe brought home. in 1863, 996; in 1869, 975; 
ani in 1870, 837 reindeer. When to this we add the great number of rein- 
deer which are shot in spring and are not included in these calculations. and 
when we consider that the number of walrus-hunting vessels which are fitted 
out from Tromsoe is less than that of those which go out from Ha nmerfest, 
| North Novaya Zemlya or the Taimur Peninsula, where 
it is almost protected from the attacks of the hunter. Even 
on the low-lying part of South Novaya Zemlya the rein- 
deer, notwithstanding the abundance of the summer 
pasture, is so rare that when one lands there, any reindeer- 
hunting is scarcely to be counted on. It first occurs in 
any considerable numbers farther to the north, on both 
sides of Matotschkin Schar.” 
Notwithstanding the immense destruction of the rein- 
deer in recent times their numbers in Spitzbergen keep 
so well up that it has been supposed they migrate from 
Novaya Zemlya. But Baron Nordenskjéld shows that this 
is not the case, as the reindeer of the two islands belong 
to different races. The fact that marked reindeer have 
been found in Spitzbergen has also led to the supposition 
that they found their way from some more northerly 
inhabited land, a supposition that does not seem probable, 
but is certainly worth verifying. Then we have our old 
friend the Polar bear, followed by the mountain-fox and 
the lemming. The marine life of these northern regions 
makes up amply for any scarcity of life on land. 
‘*Here animal life is exceedingly abundant as far as 
man has succeeded in making his way to the farthest 
north. At nearly every sweep the dredge brings up from 
the sea-bottom masses of decapods, crustacea, mussels, 
asterids, echini,! &c., in varying forms, and the surface of 
the sea on a sunny day swarms with pteropods, beroids, 
surface-crustacea, &c.’’ 
Of the higher animal types of these seas the walrus, 
now that the right whale is nearly extinct, is the most 
important, and therefore comes in for a long notice. 
Even the walrus has suffered greatly from excessive 
hunting, and unless precautions are taken, will go the way 
of the right whale. The walrus haunts particular places 
of Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen, attracted by the 
abundance of their special food, which does not consist, 
as is often stated, of seaweed, but of various living 
mussels from the bottom of the sea, principally JZya 
truncata and Saxicava rugosa. Seals and whales are 
also referred to at some length. 
Through Yugor Schar the vessels steamed their way 
into the Kara Sea on August 1. And here we are told 
a great deal about inland ice and icebergs, and the rich 
life-conditions of the Kara Sea, its surroundings and 
hydrography. The remarks on inland ice are specially 
valuable, the subject being illustrated by the writer’s exten- 
sive experience in Greenland and Spitzbergen. We repro- 
duce here (Fig. 2) a section which he gives of inland ice, and 
a picture of a Novaya Zemlya glacier (Fig. 3). The inland 
ice, Baron Nordenskjéld tells us, is of too inconsiderable 
extent to allow of any large icebergs being formed. There 
are none such accordingly in the Kara Sea, and it is 
seldom that even a large glacier ice-block is to be met 
drifting about. Indeed the Baron tells us that the popu- 
lar notion as to the frequency of true icebergs in the far 
north is quite erroneous, the actual fact being that ice- 
bergs occur in far greater numbers in the seas which are 
purely accessible. The abundance of life in the Kara 
Sea is remarkable, though this has only been re-ently 
known, the old notion on this point being quite erroneous. 
As a specimen of the life to be found in this sea, we give 
here an Umbellula (Fig. 4). 
Dickson’s Harbour, at the mouth of the Yennissei, was 
reached on August 6, and so the first stage of the voyage 
was happily completed, Beyond this all was new, but it 
seemed to be felt that if Cape Chelyuskin was safely 
passed, all the rest would be comparatively easy. Here 
upwards of 100 pages are devoted to various topics of 
and that the shooting of reindeer on Spitzbergen is a!so carried on by hunters 
from o.her towns, and by tourists. we must suppose that at least 3000 rein- 
deer have been killed during each of those years. Formerly reindeer 
stalking was yet more productive, but since 1870 the number killed has 
considerably diminished. ss 
 Echini occur only very sparingly in the Kara Sea and the Siberian Polar 
Sea, but Novaya Zevnlya at certain places in such numbers that they almost 
appear to c ver the sea-bottom. 
