ON THE ORNITHOLOGY OF LAPLAND. 247 



in Scandinavia the forms found in Greenland and 

 Iceland never seem to occur." 



Far from this being the case, I never yet heard 

 of this dark variety (unless, indeed, we follow 

 Mlsson, and consider this dark form as nothing 

 more than the Iceland and Greenland bird in a 

 dark state of plumage) being killed off the fells ; 

 and certainly all the jer-falcons which are killed in 

 the south and middle of Sweden (and I have seen 

 them very white) appear to belong to the Green- 

 land and Iceland forms. Nay, more than this, I 

 bought at Quickiock a skin of a very fine white 

 old Iceland falcon, which was killed up there in 

 1861. The man who shot it considered it a great 

 rarity, as he had never seen one so white before, 

 and, in his opinion, it was very distinct from the 

 common "rip spenning," and so it clearly was; 

 but I do believe that the only bird which breeds on 

 these fells is the dark Falco jer-falco Norwegians. 

 I very much doubt, however, whether we are cor- 

 rect in applying the Linnaean synonym of Falco 

 lanarius to this bird, and in this opinion I am 

 borne out by Nilsson ; for, in the last edition of 

 his " Birds of Scandinavia" (1858), he describes 

 the Falco lanarius, Lin., as quite a different bird, 

 under the Swedish name of " slag falk." And 

 although Linnaeus, in his " Systema Naturae" (at 

 least, in my translation by Turton, of 1800), in 



