PREFACE 



THAT the Bird Life of Russian Lapland should be very slightly 

 known to Englishmen is, no doubt, partly due to the diffi- 

 culties of travel there, and also to the fact that the fishing 

 and shooting are not good enough to tempt our countrymen to 

 penetrate its wildernesses. Sportsmen have often been valuable 

 pioneers in ornithological work. Until lately the only sources of 

 information available in English respecting even the country itself 

 were Edward Rae's books, " The Land of the North Wind," and 

 " The White Sea Peninsula," in which accounts are given of his 

 journeys in 1873 and 1879. I^ ^^^ former year he sailed in a 

 Russian boat up the west coast of the Kanin peninsula, and journeyed 

 through some of the interior of that district; while in the latter 

 year the most important part of his travels was from Kandalax to 

 Kola by the series of lakes which form a natural highway for much 

 of the distance. These books show Rae to have been gifted with 

 many of the qualities most necessary in a traveller ; and, as I after- 

 wards found to my cost, he certainly selected the only feasible means 

 of reaching the coast of the Kanin peninsula. The list of birds 

 given in his second book is, however, open to question ; at all events, 

 some of the species, if correctly identified, had wandered very far 

 from their usual habitats. Lieutenant George T. Temple, R.N., con- 

 tributed a short account of Russian Lapland to the Proceedings of 

 the Royal Geographical Society for October 1880, accompanied by 

 a map, which he had drawn from the original one made by Professor 

 J. A. Friis, and this map was reprinted by Rae in his " White Sea 

 Peninsula." As it is still the best existing of the country, I have 

 inserted it in the present volume, with some slight alterations. 



