Mr. A. Newton on the Birds of Spitsbergen. 199 



even at the best time of year, of catching a malarious fever, 

 more or less severe. I used always to take a good dose of qui- 

 nine every morning, and administered another to Enrique and 

 Crux, but the latter had a slight attack. I found him shiver- 

 ing one day, and in tears ! He had caught fever and was going 

 to die, and so far from home ! I gave him about twenty grains 

 of quinine, and told him to lie down. He almost immediately 

 went to sleep, and never woke till next morning. The fever had 

 left him; but he had another slight attack after returning to the 

 highlands. Neither did Enrique escape ; but he was a man of 

 quite a different stamp, and, though suffering from frequent 

 returns of this assiduous enemy, continued his expeditions after 

 I left the country. It has followed him into Costa Rica, where 

 he is now making collections of the splendid and little-known 

 birds of that country. I escaped with the same good fortune I 

 always had in Guatemala, never having had an attack of fever 

 the whole time I was there. How Mr. Bates, on the Amazons, 

 existed so long upon fish only, I cannot imagine. I was sick 

 of the sight of it after a month of little else. There is, perhaps, 

 no food of which one so soon becomes disgusted as insipid fish 

 badly cooked, the usual fare of Chiapam and Huamuchal. This 

 was my last cruize in Guatemala ; a month later and I was again 

 at San Jose, on my way to Europe, having in the meantime 

 taken a flying visit to some of my old quarters in the highlands. 

 ^ _ 



-^ XX. — Notes on the Birds of Spitsbergen. 

 By Alfred Newton, M.A., F.L.S., &c. 

 (Plate VI.) 

 Having last summer, thanks to the hospitality of Mr. Edward 

 Birkbeck, enjoyed the opportunity of visiting Spitsbergen, a 

 country in many ways very interesting to a naturalist, and which 

 therefore I had long wished to see, I believe that a paper on its 

 general ornithology will not be unacceptable to the readers of 

 the ' Ibis ' ; and I am fortunately able to supplement my own 

 very limited observations on that subject by the more extended, 

 and therefore the more valuable, experience of one whose autho- 

 rity is far higher than mine. In 1861, Mr. A. J. Malmgren 

 N. S. — VOL. I. p 



