2978 Birds. 



the ptarmigan had been lying, and pluming himself in his chilly bed. 

 He is a noble bird, free as air, and for the most part uninterrupted in 

 his wide domain; he can range over the enormous tracts of f j eld, 

 seldom roused by a human step, and still more seldom hunted by man. 

 When the winter clothes his dwelling in a garb of snow, he, too, arrays 

 himself in the purest and most beautiful white : when the summer sun 

 melts away the snow, and the gray rocks appear, he, too, puts on his 

 coloured dress, and assimilates himself once more to his beloved rocks. 

 But the young ptarmigans are my especial favourites : I have caught 

 them of all ages ; some apparently just emerged from the egg, others, 

 some weeks older : they are remarkably pretty little birds, with their 

 short black beaks and their feathered toes ; and so quickly do they 

 run, and so nimble and active are they in escaping from you, that they 

 are soon beneath some projecting stone, far beyond the reach of your 

 arm, where you hear them chirping and calling out defiance and de- 

 rision. The call of the old ptarmigan is singularly loud and hoarse ; 

 it is a prolonged, grating, harsh note, and may be heard at a great 

 distance : indeed, it is quite startling to hear the call of a male bird 

 amid the silence of the mighty fjeld. I shall never forget the oc- 

 casion of my hearing and seeing the ptarmigan for the first time : it 

 was at two o'clock in the morning, on one of the wildest fjelds. We 

 had been endeavouring to find a way to the great Voririg Foss, 

 across the mountains ; and had travelled one day's march, partly on 

 foot, partly on our clever Norwegian ponies ; and with them had as- 

 cended perfect stairs of rocks, clambered over masses of loose stones, 

 and plunged through bogs and patches of snow, and small lakes, when 

 a violent snow-storm came on ; and after pushing on as best we might 

 for some time, our guide at length conducted us to a goat-shed, where 

 we must pass the night : there was no door, and the roof was full of 

 holes, and unfortunately the wind set right in at the doorway ; how- 

 ever our Norsk guide soon collected some heather, and we made a 

 blazing fire, round which our shivering horses as well as ourselves 

 were glad to crouch, not heeding the suffocating smoke which filled 

 their noses and throats, nor the bright flame which the crackling 

 heather gave out. At first we tried to sleep ; that was a very forlorn 

 hope : although the 29th of June, the wind and snow made it intensely 

 cold, and our time was completely occupied in heaping on fresh 

 boughs of heather. As we were sitting over the fire in our hut, in 

 the early morning, while the snow-storm was at its height, and the 

 ground some inches deep in snow, a fine male ptarmigan came and 

 perched on a rock within a stone's throw of our door : neither the 



