THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 208.— April, 1894, 



BIRD LIFE IN ARCTIC NORWAY.* 

 By John Coedeaux. 



Ornithologists will be grateful to Professor Collett, of 

 Christiania, and his translator, Mr. Alfred Heneage Cocks, for 

 a useful and pleasantly -written pamphlet on * Bird Life in 

 Arctic Norway,' the observations recorded being the results of 

 wanderings within the Arctic circle made by the author during 

 seven summers. 



In these days Norway annually attracts hundreds of tourists, 

 sportsmen, and naturalists of all nationalities. Year after year 

 the stream of those who set their faces northward increases, and 

 we need not be surprised at this when we consider the marvellous 

 attractions of a part of Europe the scenery of which surpasses 

 anything that can be found within the same easy distance of our 

 shores. In a few hours, and with little exertion, we find ourselves 

 transported as if by magic from the conventionalities of civiliza- 

 tion and the cares of business, into a primitive world of the 

 grandest and most diversified features — a land of surpassing 

 beauty, with snow-clad mountains and shining glaciers, deep 

 fjords and sounds, matchless waterfalls, exquisite transparent 

 lakes in deeply sheltered valleys, belted with an almost southern 

 vegetation ; above these dense pine forests, and, higher still, 

 mountain wastes of immense extent with a sparse vegetation, 

 beyond the birch-zone, of lichens and dwarf shrubs and grey 



* i Bird Life in Arctic Norway' ; a popular brochure, by Robert Collett, 

 Professor of Zoology in the University of Christiania ; translated by Alfred 

 Heneage Cocks, M.A., F.Z.S. R. H. Porter, London. 



ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XVIII.— APRIL, 1894. L 



