BIRD'S-NESTING IN LAPLAND 15 



Wolley's letters from Scandinavia attracted Newton 

 strongly, and the fauna of northern countries always 

 interested him, perhaps, more than that of any other 

 region. Wolley was an extremely accurate and careful 

 observer, who accepted nothing on hearsay evidence, 

 with the result that his collections gained greatly in 

 value from the complete authenticity of every specimen. 

 The following extract from one of his letters * shows 

 something of his energetic and painstaking nature and at 

 the same time gives a description of bird-hunting in 

 Lapland, which is as true to-day as it was in his time. 



To find the marsh birds' nests it is useless to be 

 alone ; the population here is very scanty, and just the 

 fortnight that the birds have eggs every man, woman and 

 child is busy with his own affairs, and laying in everything 

 he will want for a long winter, so that it was very difficult 

 to get any one. I had to pay high wages to the people 

 who went with me to the marshes, and besides to give 

 them two or three bits of silver for every egg they found. 

 I worked night and day, often up to my middle in mud 

 and water, under a scorching sun or in drenching rain, 

 amidst clouds of gnats of a most greedy and venomous 

 kind, which made the night more unpleasant than the 

 day. To manage ten or twelve persons, beaters, etc., is 

 no easy thing when you are well used to them and they 

 to their business, but when all your men are quite unused 

 to the kind of thing, when your Swedish companion can- 

 not understand your expressions, such as " take a beat," 

 " quarter the ground," " keep the line," when he has to 

 repeat these to a Fiimish interpreter and he again to 

 explain them to the natives, and when after all you have 

 to make these natives follow the explanations, it is 

 both difficult and fatiguing and involves great loss of 

 time. 



Then the places frequented by. the birds one want are 

 few and far between. The people do not know the kinds, 



* Dated, July, 186a 



