"524 Mr. A. Newton on the Birds of Spitsbergen. 



gren states that he can see no difference between specimens 

 from Spitsbergen and others from Iceland and Finmark, but 

 that examples killed near Gottenburg and in the Faeroes are 

 decidedly smaller and have lower bills. These, no doubt, are 

 identical with our British Puffins. 



And now having concluded this list of the Birds of Spitsber- 

 gen, I must offer a few remarks on some other species which 

 have been stated to occur there. Mr. Selby (111. Brit. Orn. ii. 

 p. 433) ascribed it as a locality for Alca impennis ; but that I 

 was, by his kindness, long ago able to show in this Journal to be 

 a mistake (Ibis, 1861, p. 376). Dr. David Walker, in his 

 " Notes " on the Zoology of the * Fox ' Expedition *, says that 

 Plectrophanes lapponica and Colymbus arcticus are found there ; 

 but, in the absence of any authority for the assertion, they 

 must on negative evidence be rejected. I do not think it 

 necessary to particularize the various species which egg-dealers 

 have announced as breeding in Spitsbergen ; their names can 

 be easily supplied by any of my readers who will call to mind 

 the various "British" birds whose incunabula we know the 

 least of. But I must notice the very circumstantial statements 

 of Sir James Boss, respecting Xema sabinii and Rhodostethia 

 rossi. Not a trace of either of these remarkable birds has 

 occurred to Dr. Malmgren, who has thoroughly explored so 

 large an extent of the country, and especially the very loca- 

 lities where they are said to have been met with. He accord- 

 ingly excludes them (and, I think, most properly) from his list, 

 saying that the young of Rissa tridactyla was most probably 

 taken for the first, and Sterna macrura for the second. Yet it is 

 incumbent upon me to remark, because he has omitted to do 

 so, that in the 'Fauna Boreali-Americana ' (vol. ii. p. 428) 

 General Sabine is stated to have "killed a pair" of Xema sabinii 

 " at Spitsbergen," and that with regard to Rhodostethia rossi we 

 have the evidence of two other independent observers. Grant- 

 ing, as I do unconditionally, that Lieut. Foster in Hinlopen Strait 

 made the mistake suggested by Dr. Malmgren, we have yet the 

 distinct testimony of Boss himself, the discoverer of this beau- 

 tiful species, that he saw examples of it when on that celebrated 

 * Journal of the Royal Dublin Society, July 1860. 



