OliNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION IN ICELAND. 145 



the centre of what seemed a Mosquito-bive. The sunnier side of the 

 tenting they almost hid, " making the green — one black," columns 

 were pouring in through the jointures of the closed windows and 

 where the walls of the tent met the ground, whilst the air was 

 full of them and of the small detonations which they made as they 

 hit the top or sides, both from within and without. The heat, 

 too, was now almost unendurable even for the few hours more of 

 it only which I expected. However things had got to the worst, 

 and they shortly mended. First I took a plaid, and exterminated 

 the greater number of those that were settled on the sides and 

 roof, by drawing it along them. I then heaped pebbles on the 

 canvas in contact with the ground or that ought to be so, or 

 otherwise tried to stop up the apertures, however small, all 

 round the sides of the tent ; but nothing was quite effectual, the 

 stones least of all, for Mosquitoes still crawled up between them, 

 and still the columns entered by the windows. To check these 

 last, I went out, and threw one of my two plaids over the top of 

 the tent, to hang down on each side, thus covering the windows, 

 and then, in a series of horrible exits — for outside was all one 

 great swarm — I added the other one and the tent flooring, as 

 well as my oilskin gaberdine, thus covering it all up, except a 

 small space, at one end, where the light still shone through. 

 Here the invasion continued, but not, now, in great force, and, 

 by keeping at the back of the now darkened tent, where it was 

 darkest, the attacks, for the most part, ceased, and I sat in 

 comparative comfort till about 11, when Sigurdsson rowed up. 

 I might have thought of this expedient — a sufficiently simple 

 one — at the very first, but, owing to inventive poverty or to its 

 not being clear to me, from the beginning, that the light inside 

 the tent was the attraction, or, at least, the conditioning circum- 

 stance, it did not enter my head, though I did hit ujDon a clumsy, 

 uncomfortable and very inadequate substitute for it, inside 

 instead of out. The lesson to be drawn is to have forethought 

 and do things properly, for with a quite-darkened tent one might 

 exclude Mosquitoes entirely, whilst a small lighted area in the 

 front part of it, only, would allow of observation whilst sitting, 

 oneself, in the dark, and, since the main incentive to entrance 

 would then be absent, or, at any rate, unperceived, only a few 

 would be likely to find their way in. The best plan of all, how- 



