They consist of petrels, swans, geese, pelicans, grebes,
auks, gulls, and divers; these last are more particularly of the duck
family, of which there are over thirty distinct species in and about
this immediate region. Curlews, wandering albatrosses, ptarmigans,
cormorants, and ospreys were also observed, besides some birds of
beautiful plumage whose names were unknown to us. Throughout all
Scandinavia the many lakes, so numerous as to be unknown by name,
also abound with water-fowl of nearly every description habitual to
the North. These inland regions afford an abundance of the white
grouse, which may be called the national bird of Norway, where it so
much abounds. The author has nowhere seen such fine specimens of this
bird except in the mountains of Colorado, where it is however very
rarely captured. In Scandinavia it changes the color of its plumage
very curiously, from a summer to a winter hue. In the first named
season these birds have a reddish brown tinge, quite clear and
distinctive; but in winter their plumage becomes of snowy
whiteness,--a fact from which naturalists are prone to draw some
finespun deductions.

As we advanced farther and farther northward our experiences became
more and more peculiar. It seemed that humanity, like Nature about
us, was possessed of a certain insomnia in these regions during the
constant reign of daylight. People were wide awake and busy at their
various occupations during all hours, while the drowsy god seemed to
have departed on a long journey to the southward. The apparent
incongruity of starting upon a fresh enterprise "in the dead vast and
middle of the night" was only realized on consulting one's watch.

To meet the temporary exigency caused by continuous daylight, as to
whether one meant day or night time in giving the figure on the dial,
the passengers adopted an ingenious mode of counting the hours. Thus
after twelve o'clock midday the count went on thirteen, fourteen, and
fifteen o'clock, until midnight, which was twenty-four o'clock. This
is a mode of designation adopted in both China and Italy.

Tromsoee is situated in latitude 69 deg. 38' north, upon a small but
pleasant island, though it is rather low compared with the
surrounding islands and the nearest main-land, but clothed when we
saw it, in July, to the very highest point with exquisite verdure. It
is a gay and thrifty little place built upon a slope, studded here
and there with attractive villas amid the