150 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



But this was quite at the beginning of the season, and he 

 adds: 



" We were told that this pest of mosquitoes was nothing as yet 

 to what it would become later. ' Wait a while/ said our Job's 

 comforter, ' and you will not be able to see each other at twenty 





"^mmi 



Fig. 16. — Messrs. Seebohm and Harvie-Brown watching Grey Plover 



through a Cloud of Mosquitoes. 



paces distance; you will not be able to aim with your gun, for the 

 moment you raise your barrel half-a-dozen regiments of mosquitoes 

 will rise between you and the sight.' '' 



And Mr. Seebohm described how he Avas protected by india- 

 rabber boots and cavalrv 2:auntlets, and a carefully constructed 

 cage over his head, without which he never dare go out on 

 the tundra (see Fig. 15). 



Xow this Arctic country, beyond the limit of forests and 

 stretching to the polar ocean, ^vhich is buried for eight or nine 

 months under six feet thick of snow^, is yet, during its short 

 summer, a very paradise for birds of all kinds, which flock to 

 it from all over Europe and Central Asia in order to breed 

 and to rear their young; and it is very largely, and for many 

 species almost exclusively, this very abundance of mosquitoes 

 and their larvae that is the chief attraction. In Mr. Seebohm's 

 works, already quoted, and in his fine volume on the Geo- 



