AN ORNITHOLOGICAL TOUR IN NORWAY. 423 



far the finest birch trees I have ever seen — magnificent tall, straight 

 silver trunks. Tonset, some 220 kilometres from Hamar, was 

 reached at midnight, when it was quite light enough to see the 

 place, and we took up our quarters in a sufficiently comfortable, 

 though rather primitive little hotel, built in the usual style of 

 roughly squared logs. Tonset is 1617 feet above the sea, and at 

 that date the birch trees, except in sheltered spots, were bare, 

 though the leaves expanded rapidly during the next few days. 

 The banks and islets of the Glommen, clothed with birch and 

 willows, were partly flooded, as the second or summer flood was 

 coming down. Tonset is situated at the confluence of the Tonna 

 with the Glommen, and there is a large extent of meadow land in 

 the valley. The sides of the valley are clothed at first with pine- 

 woods, with hummocky ground underfoot, covered with sphagnum, 

 yellow moss, reindeer-moss and other lichens. These woods 

 were at that date almost devoid of birds, save for a few Pied 

 Flycatchers, Tree Pipits, Redstarts, Grey Crows, and Willow 

 Wrens. Higher up, on both sides of the valley, are extensive 

 fir forests; the mountains rise sufficiently high for you to pass 

 beyond the coniferous zone into that of the birch, and out on to the 

 bare fjeld, at that time still heavily blazed with snow-drifts. The 

 fir forests are as a rule far from rich in bird-life, except when 

 you chance upon a colony of breeding Fieldfares, round which 

 the other woodland species always seem to gather. We pushed 

 through the forest on the one side to the fjeld rising nearly 3000 

 feet on the S.W. bank of the Tonna, and to the Tronfjeld, some- 

 what higher, on the east bank of the Glommen. The highest peak 

 of the Tronfjeld (5700 feet), a fine rounded pyramid, appeared to 

 us almost entirely snow-clad. There is a fair amount of cultivated 

 ground close to Tonset, chiefly on a low rounded hill lying in the 

 apex formed by the two rivers. 



The fir forests are very lovely and fascinating. For they are 

 wild forests, not cared for like the Swiss forests, but ill used, 

 dotted with new and ancient moss-grown tree stumps, and old 

 felled trunks ; with trees of all ages and little clearings. The 

 ground, too, is brilliant underfoot with a bright yellow moss, which 

 makes the forest gleam in a curious way. Many of the trees are 

 festooned with streamers of black hairy lichen, perhaps the beard 

 lichen (Usnea barbata). 



Unfortunately the weather was very wet during our stay here, 



