16 
WILD NORWAY. 
In Norway tlie Gulf Stream is a governing factor 
both as to climate and ornithology. None of the 
purely ice-loving fowl remain here. The wild geese 
of Norway are all greylags : her characteristic ducks 
are pintail and wigeon — all three being species of 
essentially temperate tastes. The ice-loving brents and 
bernacles, on the other hand, with the bean- and pink¬ 
footed geese, the wild swans, northern divers, and true 
hyperborean fowl, pass right beyond the whole Norsk 
coast, and seek congenial homes in Spitsbergen, Novaya 
Zemlya, or Siberia, where no warm current from the 
tropic tempers the frigid zone or troubles their incredible 
love of cold.* On the other hand, one finds breeding 
throughout Norway many millions of the tiniest and 
most delicate of the summer-songsters—such as the 
bluethroat and redstart, the icterine, blackcap, and 
garden-warblers, chiff-chaff, willow-wren,whinchat, swift, 
all our British Hirundines, and both species of fly¬ 
catchers, as far up as Lapland ; at least a thousand 
miles north of the point at which their representative 
and congeneric species cease to exist under transatlantic 
conditions. 
Of familiar bird-forms which are chiefly conspicuous 
by their absence may be mentioned the stonechat and 
corn-bunting, wood-wren, reed- and sedge-warbler (the 
latter very rare in the south), the partridge and white 
owl; while the peewit, skylark, and waterhen are 
extremely scarce and local. 
Another illustration of climatic mildness is afforded 
by the butterflies. The Scandinavian list includes one 
* Here, again, I write generally, and omit notice of exceptions 
to the general rule laid down. 
