50 
Messrs. H. H. Slater and T. Carter’s 
brought in a clutch of eggs which we put down as belonging 
to this bird, an opinion which Professor Newton endorses. 
-f Purple Sandpiper. (Tringa striata.) 
We obtained two clutches of the eggs of this bird, which 
would seem to breed sparsely on the bleakest and wildest 
uplands or “ hefbies.” 
i Sanderling. (Calidris arenaria.) 
An officious native having, at considerable trouble to him¬ 
self, informed the authorities that we were shooting birds in 
the close season (a fact of which they were already quite 
aware), they felt themselves compelled to send us a messenger 
with a copy of the law on the subject, as a delicate hint to 
keep our proceedings quiet. This law, it is perhaps worthy 
of remark, is printed in Danish and French, although nine 
tenths of the tourists in Iceland are British. The great 
offenders, owing to whom it originally became necessary to 
pass the law, are the officers of the various French men-of- 
war sent there to protect the interest of the bonus-fed French 
cod-fishermen. These gentry were, and still are, in the habit 
of going ashore in boatloads, and slaying, no matter at what 
season, everything they find with feathers on it. 
In consequence of this message from the authorities, we 
went out for a day or two without guns, and of course one 
of them proved to be the one day, of all others, when a gun 
would have been invaluable. For we came upon a nest that 
day, on a tussock-side at the edge of a marsh, from which 
the old bird fluttered off in a perfectly different manner from 
a Dunlin; this, combined with the appearance of the bird, 
impelled the finder to drop his hat on the nest to mark it, and 
to follow the old bird, which trotted or crept away, according 
to the openness of the ground, without uttering a sound, a few 
yards in front of him. He followed her for about a hundred 
yards, keeping his field-glasses focused upon her, and then 
returned to the nest, perfectly convinced that he had been 
looking at a Sanderling. He was chiefly struck with the 
rusty colour of her throat, with the plain white breast, and 
with her perfect muteness. The eggs were packed with great 
