Mr. A. Newton on the Birds of Spitsbergen. 523 



opportunity of examining which I am indebted to Mr. Baker, 

 of Cambridge. The twelfth is the bird killed in the Isle of 

 Wight, and recorded by Mr. A. G. More in the ' Zoologist ' for 

 1860 (p. 6858), which, as noticed in the abis' for 1860 (p. 

 419), was pronounced by Mr. G. R. Gray to be an example of 

 F. glacialis ; but in that opinion I do not coincide. The specimen 

 is now in the possession of Mr. F. Bond, who was good enough 

 to allow me to make a minute examination of it. 



It is to be observed from the above Table, that though, in the 

 case of one single measurement, a specimen of F. arctica may 

 occasionally approach the smallest of the examples of F. glacialis 

 (which, I may remark, was one picked out as the very smallest of 

 all we shot), yet this excess seems always, except in the case of 

 the Iceland birds, to be attained at the expense of other mea- 

 surements. This fact, taken in combination with the very 

 singular form of the bill, which is well represented in Mr. Wolfs 

 plate (PI. IX.), and the apparently precise geographical distribu- 

 tion of the two birds, induces me to regard them as distinct 

 forms — at any rate, quite as much so as are Loxia pityopsittacus 

 and L. curvirostra. Scoresby mentions in a note (i. p. 528) 

 that Swainson, on comparing a drawing of a Spitsbergen with a 

 British Puffin, " considered it as a distinct species." I do not 

 feel so sure of the assertion of Stephens [loc. cit.), that the 

 colours in the more northern bird are " more intense." 



The Northern Puffin is the least common of the Alcidce in 

 the Spitsbergen waters. Indeed, when the extraordinary abun- 

 dance of at least two of the other species is taken into account, 

 it may almost be called rare. Ross, however, couples it with 

 the last in his statement that it was found in considerable 

 numbers on Walden and Little Table Islands ; but, on the other 

 hand. Dr. Malmgren says that this was not the case according 

 to his experience. He saw several examples at the beginning of 

 September near Norway and Amsterdam Islands ; and in June 

 some were shot in Treurenberg Bay. In his last voyage he also 

 found Puffins at Bear Island, but in no great numbers. We 

 observed them several times at a considerable distance from 

 land ; but they were most plentiful, as I have said, about Sassen 

 Bay, some thirty or forty miles from the open sea. Dr. Malm- 



