150 A VOYAGE TO SPITZBEEGEN, ETC. 



The temperature resembled, generally, a fine winter's day in 

 England, the thermometer ranging down to betAveen 32° and 35° 

 niinimiim daily. The surface temperature of the sea, which at 

 Tromso, 69° 38' north lat., was about 50°, fell as we went north; 

 and was permanent at 32° at our highest point, near the 80th 

 degree. In the Sounds, where unaffected by ice, it was occasion- 

 ally as high as 38°, but 33° to 35° was the average in Ice Fjord. 

 All trace of the Gulf Stream influence appears to be lost about 

 the north of Spitzbergen. 



On our homeward voyage we again encountered the same difS.- 

 culty in clearing the packed ice round Bear Island, this time ag- 

 gravated by dense fogs. We first cast anchor at Hammerfest, 

 and -thence without further incident reached the Tyne on August 

 22nd. 



P.S. — Since these Notes have been written, one of my former 

 fellow-voyagers, Mr. A. H. Cocks, F.Z.S., has again visited 

 Spitzbergen, but his subsequent observations do not materially 

 add to the information previously obtained. I am inclined to 

 think that the ornithology of Spitzbergen is now tolerably well 

 understood, and that but little more can be expected therefrom 

 than the occurrence of those cosmopolitan stragglers which sooner 

 or later turn up everywhere. 



ORNITHOLOGY OF SPITZBERGEN. 



Geneeal Ee:maeks. — Countless as are the feathered multitudes 

 which make Spitzbergen their summer home, perhaps unsur- 

 passed by any similar extent of country on the globe, yet the 

 element of variety is conspicuously absent. The total number 

 of species recorded from Spitzbergen is only some sis-or-seven- 

 and-twenty, while the number observed by us on the cruise of 

 the " Pallas" was but twenty-one or twenty-two. 



The whole of its avi-fauna are summer migrants to Spitzbergen 

 with the single exception of the Ptarmigan, which, alone of its 

 class, remains to brave the rigours and the long sunless months 



