THE NIDOLOGIST Itt 
COMMON PUFFINS (F. ARCTICA) ON ONE OF THE ROCKS AT ROTT. STAVANGER, NORWAY. 
(From a Photograph by Dr. Collett) 
Ornithology in Norway. 
BY DR. R. W. SHUFELDT. 
HERE is a great deal about Norway 
and the coast of Norway that reminds 
one of what he sees along the shores 
of Maine, or Labrador and the adjacent 
regions; while in certain of the districts 
back from the ocean in these latter local- 
ities, the topography of the country is not 
so very different from what we see in Nor- 
wegian landscapes in similar places. And, 
so it is, with the sea-fowl of these several 
precipitous and rock bound shores. Many 
of the birds, such as Grebes, Loons, Puffins, 
Auks, Guillemots, Dovekies, Jaegers, 
Gulls, Terns, Fulmars, Shearwaters, Petrels, 
Cormorants, Mergansers, Ducks, and a 
perfect host of others are common to the 
two countries, though this does not obtain 
to such a marked degree in the case of the 
land birds. But the Capercally of Norway 
would be perfectly at home in the forests of 
Maine,—indeed I believe it has already been 
successfully introduced there. We have 
one Woodcock, while the big European 
Woodcock is found all over Norway; plenty 
of Ptarmigan are found in the last named 
country, while certain representatives of 
these birds are well-known to Labrador, 
and in vigorous winter no doubt could often 
be found in north-eastern Maine. Owls 
_and Hawks, not so very different in charac- 
ter, occur in both countries, and the same 
remark applies to some of the limicoline 
birds. Incidently, it may also be said here, 
that what is true of the Norwegian Avi- 
fauna is also true of the other classes of 
animals,—for, asa rule, representatives of 
any of the vertetrate or invertetrate groups 
we may be pleased to select, will be found 
to occur, in these latitudes, upon either side 
of the Atlantic. Many pens in this country 
have made the Ornithology of all our New 
England districts, as well as the eastern 
portions of her Majesty’s domimions in 
America, familiar to us—and, soit has been 
in northern Europe. So far as Norway is 
concerned, however, there is no one of her 
naturalists, in these days, that has done 
more towards the elucidation of the natural 
history of that country than has been ac- 
complished by Dr. Robert Collett of the 
Zoological Museum of Christiania. Very 
well does the writer remember at the first 
Congress of the American Ornithologists’ 
Union in 1883 in New York, when Dr. 
Collett was elected a corresponding mem- 
ber of that organization;—since which time 
at various intervals, not a few letters have 
passed between us, as have also many pub- 
