42 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
scarcely add that our new guests, the forerunners of spring, were 
disturbed on board as little as possible. 
We now began industriously to collect material for a know¬ 
ledge of the avi“ and mammal-fauna of the region. The 
collections, when this is being written, are not yet worked out, 
and I can therefore only make the following statement on 
this point: 
From the acquaintance I had made during my own preceding 
journeys and the study of others’, with the bird-world of the high 
north, I had got the erroneous idea that about the same species of 
birds are to be met with everywhere in the Polar lands of Europe, 
Asia, and America. Experience gained during the expedition of 
the Vega shows that this is by no means the case, but that the 
north-eastern promontory of Asia, the Chukch peninsula, forms 
in this respect a complete exception. Birds occur here in much 
fewer numbers, but with a very much greater variety of types 
than on Novaya Zemlya, Spitzbergen, and Greenland ; in con¬ 
sequence of which the bird-world on the Chukch peninsula has 
in its entirety a character differing wholly from that of the 
Atlantic Polar lands. We indeed meet here with types closely 
allied to the glaucous gull {Laras glaueus, Brlinn.), the ivory gull 
{L. ehimuus, GmeL), the kittiwake {L. tridactylus, L.), the long¬ 
tailed duck {Harelda glacialis, L.), the king duck {Somateria 
spectahilis, L.),^ the phalarope {Phalaropus fidicaodus, Bonap.), the 
purple sandpiper ( Tringa maritima, Briinn.), &c., of Spitzbergen 
and Novaya Zemlya; but along with these are found here many 
peculiar species, for instance the American eider {Sortiateria 
V-nigrum, Gray), a swanlike goose, wholly white with black 
wing points {Anser liyperhoreus, Pall.), a greyish-brown goose with 
bushy yellowish-white feather-covering on the head {Anser pictus^ 
Pall.), a species of Fuligula, elegantly coloured on the head in 
velvet-black, white, and green, {Fuligida Stelleri, Pall.), the 
^ The common eider {S. moUissima, L.) is absent here, or at least exceed¬ 
ingly rare. 
