IN EUROPE — SWEDEN. 
11 
the character, cauda ahrupta, semper alba. In that hare, 
moreoyer, Nilsson recognises two distinct forms, which I would 
regard as two good species, and the rather, because the hares 
of different countries seem to me not to have been sufficiently 
compared. The same naturalist has recognised six Swedish 
species, of that very difficult genus, Lemnus or Arvieola, viz., 
— the norwegicus, the amphibius, a new species from Lap- 
land, which he calls medius, the arvalis, the rutilus, and the 
glareola. He has also discovered in Scania, the most southern 
province of Sweden, the Mus betulinus of Pallas, which he 
clearly proves not to be a Mus, but to belong, in reality, to 
the very distinct genus, Smintlms. Nor ought I to pass over 
some facts, from which he advises me to cancel my Sciurus 
italieus, but which rather confirm the existence of a species 
hitherto mistaken by others. I beg, therefore, the meeting to 
test this species, by the very rules which my learned opponent 
suggests, referring to the skulls which I here exhibit. A 
more just objection is made by him to the criticism of 
Temminck, on the shortness of the claws in the Plates 6 and 
7 of his Lag opus subalpinus, a critique which originated in 
Temminck not being aware, that the bird changes not only its 
feathers but its claws, which last are longest only in winter ; a 
provision which adapts it to scratch the hardened snow, just 
as the white plumage enables it to remain unobserved by rapa- 
cious animals, upon the whitened surface of the ground. The 
light thrown by Nilsson on the Ichthyology of the Baltic is 
well known ; I will merely mention one of his more recent dis- 
coveries, viz., — an obscure species of Salmonidce from that 
region, and a second species of the Mediterranean genus, 
Argentina. In that country also is continued, and now nearly 
completed, the purely Iconographic work of Wright, on the 
Birds of Sweden. Snndevall also, who has given us an orni- 
thological system, abounding in sound science, continues to 
publish, in the Swedish periodicals, the descriptions of various 
birds of that country. Let us unite in lamenting the death of 
the Ichthyologist Fries, and let us be thankful, that his surviv- 
ing colleague, Erkstrom, continues in a praiseworthy manner, 
the magnificent work on the Fish of Scandinavia, which tliey 
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