BIRD LIFE IN ARCTIC NORWAY. 123 



nest incredible numbers of some species, as the Spitsbergen and 

 Briinnich's Guillemots, Little Auk, the Glaucous, Iceland, and 

 Ivory Gulls, and others which never breed so far south as 

 Norway. The Razorbill does not breed beyond the northern part 

 of Norway, and it is probable that its large and extinct relative 

 the Great Auk never occurred, except accidentally, north of the 

 Arctic circle. It was on Horno, near Vardo, the most easterly 

 bird-rock of Finmark, that in 1848 a reputed Great Auk was shot 

 by Herr L. Brodtkorb (Mitth. Orn. Ver. Wien. 1884). Professor 

 Collett still gives credence to this story, but Professor Newton, in 

 his latest contribution to the history of this species (' Dictionary 

 of Birds,' art. Gare-fowl, p. 305), declines to accept it, the whole 

 matter, in his opinion, having been thoroughly sifted by Wolley 

 forty years ago. 



An interesting question is raised by the author as to where 

 all these enormous hosts of high Arctic birds pass the winter, 

 some of them only occurring sparingly off the Norwegian coast, 

 and the Spitsbergen Guillemot, Uria mandii, being unknown on 

 any European coast. 



The young of the Razorbill, ushered into the world on a bare 

 wind-swept ledge exposed to every storm, to sleet, snow, and rain, 

 is almost entirely naked, but the young Puffin, born in a deep 

 and sheltered hole, is a living ball of down, the apparent un- 

 fitness of this arrangement is one of those points in the economy 

 of nature difficult to understand; for it does not appear, in this case 

 at least, that the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. Illustra- 

 tions of the young of these, also of the Kittiwake, are given. 



On the belt of islands which fringe the coast the most 

 characteristic birds are Oystercatchers, Ringed Plovers, Turn- 

 stones, and various Gulls and Terns. On the larger islands, or 

 egg-holms, nest great numbers of Eiders, the Grey-lag Goose, 

 the Great Black-backed Gull, and Arctic Skua. On an island in 

 Lofoten have bred for years a pair of Bernacle Geese, a bird 

 which nests nowhere else in Europe, nor does the Brent Goose, 

 but in the spring immense numbers of the latter come on a fixed 

 day in May to the Naze, and more follow; then in rows as 

 straight as a line they sweep northward along the whole coast 

 till they fetch the outermost north-westerly Skerries, and from 

 thence " northward " is still the cry to Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, 

 and further still into the infinite unknown beyond. 



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