480 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
period in Norway. The district of Vaage is not situated on the 
west coast, yet I have but little doubt that the ancestors of the mam- 
moth which came to grief there immigrated to western Norway 
from Scotland: over the Scoto-Norwegian land bridge. I will 
emphasize here that Elephas primigenius has been found fossil not 
only in Scotland, but also in Ireland, thus adhering to the general 
distribution of most of the “ Atlantic” species we are dealing with. 
It “is most abundantly found in all the British Pleistocene deposits 
from the Forest bed of Norfolk upwards. . . . It is one of the few 
Pleistocene species that have been found in Ireland. The animal 
must have lived in Britain in vast numbers, and for a long time.”? 
The Vaage district is directly on the line between Dovre, Lom, 
and Nordfjord. Nordfjord, on the west coast, is nearly in the 
center of the area which in Norway must have constituted the 
northeastern abutment of the Scoto-Norwegian land bridge. It is 
probably along the same route that the “ Arctatlantic”’ plants pene- 
trated into the adjacent interior plateau regions of Norway where 
they form such a conspicuous part of the flora.’ 
The occurrence of the mammoth in connection with this particular 
element of the flora is highly suggestive. 
V.. Two.“ ATLANTIC” SpECTES ‘OF BIRDS 
That various species of land birds occasionally visit west Norway 
from Scotland there is ample evidence, I need only mention Motacilla 
boarula and M. rai. That others migrate regularly back and forth 
between the two countries is also fairly well established. The 
former, as a rule, do not seem to establish colonies,®? and with regard 
to the latter we have only the theory to go by that they migrate 
along their ancient line of dispersal. Such a theory, if unsupported 
by evidence of a former land connection, would be worthless, but 
*'W. Boyd Dawkins, Brit. Pleistoc. Mamm., 1866, Introd., p. xxxiii. 
? See Wille, Invandr. Arct. Flora Elem. Norge, in Nyt. Mag. Naturv., X.iu, 
1905, DP. 337- 
* Mention should be made of the fact that the black-backed English wag- 
tail (Motacilla alba lugubris) breeds, at least occasionally, in western Norway 
near Stavanger and Bergen according to Collett (Nyt Mag. Naturv., xxxv, 
1893, p. 104), a reference which seems to have been overlooked by Hartert 
in his Vogel der Palaarktischen Fauna. No weight is attached to this 
invasion which seems to be quite recent, a surmise which is strengthened 
by the facts that the bird is only an occasional visitor to the Shetlands, that 
the typical M. alba is the breeding bird of Ireland, and that it also breeds 
here and there in England and Scotland. 
