Recent Ornithological Publications. 335 



of the Lulea. Mr. Wheelwright was so fortunate as to obtain 

 from some Lapps the contents of the nest of a Snowy Owl 

 {Nyctea nivea) from the Norwegian frontier, the only eggs of 

 that species from Scandinavia which, so far as we know, have 

 ever come into the possession of naturalists, with the exception 

 of those recorded by Herr Lilljeborg ((Efvers. K. Vet.-Akad. 

 Forhandl. 1844, p. 212). 



Mr. Wheel wright^s larger work, -as will be inferred from its 

 title, is of much greater pretensions ; yet we do not like it so well 

 as its forerunner. As a close observer of out-door phenomena, 

 he is not easily surpassed ; and he has the knack of writing down 

 what he has observed in plain, unaffected language ; but all 

 this is altered when he becomes a compiler, and though he tells 

 us his library is " such as few British naturalists could beat," 

 we have our doubts either as to its ext&nt or the manner in 

 which he uses it. He appears, for instance, not to be aware of 

 the valuable series of papers by Herr Wallengren in the ' Nau- 

 mannia,^ which no person writing on the birds of Scandinavia 

 should fail to consult ; and he ignores the fact that Dr. Kjser- 

 bolling is not considered by all his countrymen so sound an 

 ornithological authority as would appear from the frequent re- 

 ference to his name in these pages. Indeed it is something like 

 putting a race-horse to draw a plough, for an original and keen 

 observer like Mr. Wheelwright to sit down to the drudgery of 

 compilation. But his ' Ten Years in Sweden ' contains much 

 information that our readers will appreciate, and we have great 

 pleasure in recommending it to their notice. We wish it did 

 not so often offend our eyes by its constant mispelling of Swedish 

 words ; however, in that respect it is much better printed than 

 the ' Spring and Summer in Lapland.' 



We have spoken of ' Ten Years in Sweden ' as a compilation ; 

 we might fairly characterize it by a harsher term. Surely there 

 is a tendency to '^ book-making " in it, shown by the addition of 

 lists of the birds of Spitsbergen and Greenland, the latter of 

 which countries has nothing whatever to do with the Scandi- 

 navian peninsula. Dr. Malmgren's paper, to which we referred 

 in our last number [supra, p. 227), is of course laid under con- 

 tribution for a knowledge of the avifauna of Spitsbergen, while 



