304 
WILD NORWAY. 
The natives were hooking out small perch from 
boats moored beneath the trees. Being superior to this, 
I caught nothing, save a huge clam which seized a 
“ spoon ”—apparently in mid-water. 
Furthur north, towards Yiborg, the country is 
diversified with shallow sheets of water inhabited by 
pike and several species of grebe (Podicipes nigricollis 
and P. auritus), with a few coots, mallards, and teal. 
Otherwise, the avifauna of agricultural Denmark is as 
monotonous as its scenery. True, there are perfect 
myriads of the graminivorous birds, such as larks, the 
volume of whose chorus fills the evening air. There are 
starlings, too—millions, and storks, but nothing that I 
am here going to expend one line upon. 
The heaths of Jutland present an appearance not 
unlike, in the distance, a flat Northumbrian moor ; but 
more arid, sterile, poverty-pinched moorlands do not 
exist on earth. Even heather can hardly grow. Wiry 
and stunted, poor calluna is dwarfed to the pitiful 
semblance of a saxifrage, and scarce plant-growth of 
any kind can boast a foot of height. This barrenness 
of the alillieden is attributable to their geological forma¬ 
tion. An alluvial clothing of a couple of inches— 
mostly gravel—lying immediately on an impermeable 
substratum of hard marly limestone, is well-nigh fatal 
to plant-life and all other. The stony moorland is 
spotted—not clothed—with sporadic patches of trailing 
heaths, between which is exposed the naked soil.^ The 
green monotony of the cornlands is here exchanged for 
* A few plants collected on the ahlheden of West Jutland 
included heather, needle-whin (Genista anglica ), crowberry (Empetrum 
nigrum ), and Salix repens, the creeping willow. 
