114 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. III. 
They never settle on a grassy sward or on a level sandy beach. 
The steep fowl-fell sides, the sea, ground-ice, pieces of drift-ice 
and small stones rising above the water, form their habitat. 
They swim with great skill both on, and under the water. The 
black guillemots and rotges fly swiftly and well; Briinnich’s 
guillemots, on the contrary, heavily and ill. The latter therefore 
do not perhaps remove in winter farther from their hatching 
places than to the nearest open water, and it is probable that 
colonies of Briinnich’s guillemots are not located at places 
where the sea freezes completely even far out from the coast. 
On this perhaps depends the scarcity of Briinnich’s guillemot 
in the Kara Sea. 
While sailing in the Arctic Ocean, vessels are nearly always 
attended by two kinds of gulls, the greedy stormaosen or 
horgmaesteren, glaucous gull {Larus glaucus, Brlinn.), and the 
gracefully formed, swiftly flying kryckian or tretaoiga maosen, 
kittiwake {Larus tridactylus, L.), and if the hunter lies to at an 
ice-floe to flense upon it a seal which has been shot, it is not 
long till a large number of snow-white birds with dark blue 
bills and black legs settle down in the neighbourhood in order 
that they may get a portion of the spoil. They belong to the 
third kind of gull common in the north, ismaosen, the ivory 
gull {Larus ehurneus, Gmel.). 
In disposition and mode of life these gulls differ much from 
each other. The glaucous gull is sufficiently strong to be able 
to defend its eggs and young against the attack of the mountain 
fox. It therefore breeds commonly on the summits of easily 
accessible small cliffs, hillocks or heaps of stones, preferably in 
the neighbourhood of '' loomeries ” or on fowl-islands, where 
the young of the neighbouring birds offer an opportunity for 
prey and hunting during the season when its own young are 
being fed. Sometimes, as for instance at Brandywine Bay on 
Spitzbergen, the glaucous gull breeds in great flocks on the 
ledges of steep fell-sides, right in the midst of Brtinnich’s 
