112 
WILD NORWAY. 
it could well be mistaken ; still, I ask no one to accept 
my sanderling as gospel, for, should my identification 
be correct, there would be no great difficulty in estab¬ 
lishing the fact by solid proof in another year. Where 
one sanderling breeds, many more probably do the same. 
On the other hand, should this have been an isolated 
or exceptional case, little or no value attaches to it.* 
When one comes to realize the truly boundless area 
of wild upland plateaux in Norway, with their un¬ 
numbered lakes, studded with islets which are never 
visited, and surrounded by moory wastes absolutely 
untrodden by human foot, much less by naturalists— 
save for a few weeks in summer, when the peasants 
drive up their cattle and secure a scant crop of hay— 
one wonders if, after all, these vast wastes may not yet 
prove to be one home of those missing birds, such as 
the sanderling, whose breeding quarters in Europe still 
remain undiscovered. I am not forgetting the splendid 
ornithological work done by Professor Collett and 
others; but the region is too wide for any one man, or 
for fifty, however energetic. On many a remote fell- 
lake no boat has ever floated; and consider the labour 
of dragging one, first some thousands of feet above 
“ civilization,” then across miles of the most rugged 
ground, ere even a single loch can properly be investi¬ 
gated. At the same time, I imagine that it is those 
fjelds of under, rather than over, two thousand feet 
elevation, and especially those of marshy, moor-like 
character, that would best repay exploration. 
* The following year my friend B. F. B. examined the whole 
of the islets in this lake at the same date ; but no sign of a sandpiper 
of any species was seen. 
