SNO W B UN TING. 327 



not breed in Hudson's Bay, it is certain that many retreat to 

 this last of lands, and totally uninhabited, to perform, in full 

 security, the duties of love, incubation, and nutrition. That 

 they breed in Spitzbergen is very probable ; but we are 

 assured that they do so in Greenland. They arrive there in 

 April, and make their nests in the fissures of the rocks on 

 the mountains in May. The outside of their nest is grass, the 

 middle of feathers, and the lining the down of the arctic 

 fox. They lay five eggs, white, spotted with brown : they sing 

 finely near their nest. 



" They are caught by the boys in autumn when they collect 

 near the shores in great flocks in order to migrate, and are 

 eaten dried.* 



" In Europe, they inhabit, during summer, the most naked 

 Lapland alps, and descend in rigorous seasons into Sweden, and 

 fill the roads and fields ; on which account the Dalecarlians 

 call them illwarsfogel, or bad-weather birds — the Uplanders, 

 Jiardwarsfogel, expressive of the same. The Laplanders style 

 them alaipg. Leemsf remarks, I know not with what 

 foundation, that they fatten on the flowing of the tides in 

 Finmark, and grow lean on the ebb. The Laplanders take 

 them in great numbers in hair springs for the table, their 

 flesh being very delicate. 



" They seem to make the countries within the whole arctic 

 circle their summer residence, from whence they overflow the 

 more southern countries in amazing multitudes at the setting 

 in of winter in the frigid zone. In the winter of 1778-79, 

 they came in such multitudes into Birsa, one of the Orkney 

 Islands, as to cover the whole barony ; yet of all the numbers, 

 hardly two agreed in colours. 



"Lapland, and perhaps Iceland, furnishes the north of 

 Britain with the swarms that frequent these parts during 

 winter, as low as the Cheviot Hills, in lat. 52° 32'. Their 

 resting-places are the Feroe Isles, Shetland, and the Orkneys. 

 The Highlands of Scotland, in particular, abound with them. 

 * Faun. Greenl. 118. f Finmark, 255. 



