94 NEWTON ON BIRDS IN GREENLAND. 



VI. — Notes on Birds which have been found in Green 

 LAND. By Alfred Newton, M.A., F.R.S.; Professor of 

 Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the University 

 of Cambridge. 



Though many authorities have been consulted in making the 

 following compilation, it is founded mainly on the excellent " List 

 of the Birds hitherto observed in Greenland ", by Professor 

 Eeinhardt, which was printed in 'The Ibis' for 1861 (pp. 1-19) 

 and gives the most complete catalogue of the species of that 

 country as yet published. Some additions to it have since been 

 communicated by him to the Natural-History Union of Copen- 

 hagen*, and these I have here incorporated. I have further to 

 acknowledge, with sincere thanks, his great kindness in sending 

 me the proof-sheets of his latest contribution to the subject, made 

 during the present year and as yet unpublished {op. cit. 1875, 

 p. 127), that I might avail myself of its valuable contents. On 

 the other hand, it must be confessed that Prof. Reinhardt's " List ", 

 though all one could desire as regards the stray visitors to Green- 

 land, gives few or no particulars of the habitat of some of the 

 species which regularly frequent that country, and this informa- 

 tion I have had to supply from the work of the ill-fated Holbollf, 

 whose long residence there as an officer of the Danish Government, 

 and taste for Ornithology rendered him a most trustworthy autho- 

 rity on this head. The works of the naturalists of the last century, 

 Bruennich | and Otho Fabricius§, have not been neglected by 

 me, and as evidence of the completeness of the latter I may repeat 

 Prof. Reinhardt's remark, that since its publication the number of 

 birds known to breed in Greenland has been only increased by 

 eleven. I have of course • examined also the ' Memoir on the 

 Birds of Greenland'!, published in 1819, by the venerable Sir 

 Edward Sabine, and the far too meagre Natural- History Sup- 

 plements to the several * Voyages ' of Parry and of Ross — ^works 

 which excite regret at the glorious opportunities so ingloriously 

 missed through the absence of special naturalists, and only redeemed 

 from utter opprobrium by the zeal of volunteers.^ The long 

 series of expeditions in search of Franklin's ships from the same 

 cause was still more barren of results in respect to Arctic Orni- 

 thology, so that a single discovery of Sir Leopold McClintock's,** 



* Videnskabelige Meddelelser, 1864, p. 246 ; 1865, p. 241 ; 1872, p. 131. 



f ' Ornithologiske Bidrag til den gronlandske Fauna.' Naturhistoriske 

 Tidsskrift, 1843, pp. 361-457. A German translation of this memoir by Dr. 

 Paulsen was published at Leipzig in 1846, and again reissued in 1854. 



J Ornithologia Borealis. Hafnise: 1764. 8vo. 80 pp. 



§ Fauna Groenlandica. Hafniae et Lipsise: 1780, 8vo. pp. 53-124. 



II Transactions of the Linnean Society, xii. pp. 527-559. 



T[ The result of nearly all that was then ascertained about Birds is embodied 

 in the second volume of the well-known * Fauna Boreali- Americana ' by 

 Swainson and Kichardson. (London: 1831, 4to., 523 pp.) 



** Journal of the Royal Dublin Society, 1856, pp. 57-60. 



