xii 
INTRODUCTION, 
part of them hatch and rear their young on the rocky promonto- 
ries and inlets of the fea, and on the innumerable little ifles with 
which the extenfive coaft of Norway is ftudded, from its fouth- 
ern extremity — the Lindefnefs, or Naze, to the North Cape, 
that oppofes itfelf to the Frozen Ocean. The Hebrides, or 
Wellern Scottifh Ifles, are alfo well known to be a principal 
rendezvous to fea-fowl, and celebrated as fuch by Thomfon ; 
“ Or where the northern ocean, in vast whirls, 
“ Boils round the naked melancholy isles 
“ Of farthest T^hule / and the Atlantic surge 
“ Pours in among the stormy Hebrides ; 
“ Who can recount what transmigrations there 
“ Are annual made ? what nations come and go? 
“ And how the living clouds on clouds arise ? 
“ Infinite wings ! till all the plume-dark air, 
“ And rude resounding shore are one wild cry.” 
Other parts of the world— the bleak fliores and ifles of Lapland, 
Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, &c. 
with the vaft fweep of the Ar£lic Zone, are alfo enlivened in 
their feafons by fwarms of fea-fowl, which range the intervening 
open parts of the feas to the fhorelefs frozen ocean. There a 
barrier is put to further enquiry, beyond which the prying eye 
of man mull not look, and there his imagination only mufl; 
take the view, to fupply the place of reality. In thefe forlorn 
regions of unknowable dreary fpace, this refervoir of frofl: and 
fnow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulations of centuries 
of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, furround the 
pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold; 
even here, fo far as human Intelligence has been able to pene-* 
trate, there appears to fubfifl an abundance of animals in the air, 
and In the waters : and, perhaps, it may not be carrying con- 
jedlure too far, to fuppofe, that every region of the earth, air, 
and water, however ungenial the clime may appear to us. Is re- 
plete with animals, fuited, each kind, to the place alTigned to it» 
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