ference of the globe. It
touches only to a limited extent countries inhabited by races of
European origin (the northernmost part of Scandinavia, Iceland, Danish
Greenland), and even in the middle of this area there is a belt passing
over middle Greenland, South Spitzbergen, and Franz Josef Land, where
_the common arc_ forms only a faint, very widely extended, luminous veil
in the zenith, which perhaps is only perceptible by the winter darkness
being there considerably diminished. This belt divides the regions where
these luminous arcs are seen principally to the south from those in
which they mainly appear on the northern horizon. In the area next the
aurora-pole only the smaller, in middle Scandinavia only the larger,
more irregularly formed luminous crowns are seen. But in the latter
region, as in southern British America, aurora storms and ray and
drapery auroras are instead common, and these appear to be nearer the
surface of the earth than the arc aurora. Most of the Polar expeditions
have wintered so near the aurora-pole that _the common aurora arc_ there
lay under or quite near the horizon, and as the ray aurora appears to
occur seldom within this circle, the reason is easily explained why the
winter night was so seldom illuminated by the aurora at the winter
quarters of these expeditions, and why the description of this
phenomenon plays so small a part in their sketches of travel.

[Illustration: SONG BIRDS IN THE RIGGING OF THE "VEGA." May 1879. ]

Long before the ground became bare and mild weather commenced,
migratory birds began to arrive, first the snow-bunting on the 23rd
April, then large flocks of geese, eiders, long-tailed ducks,
gulls, and several kinds of waders and song-birds. First among the
latter was the little elegant _Sylvia Ewersmanni_, which in the
middle of June settled in great flocks on the only dark spot which
was yet to be seen in the quarter--the black deck of the _Vega_.
All were evidently much exhausted, and the first the poor things did
was to look out convenient sleeping places, of which there is
abundance in the rigging of a vessel when small birds are concerned.
I need scarcely add that our new guests, the forerunners of spring,
were disturbed on board as little as possible.

We now began industriously to collect material for a knowledge of
the avi- and mammal-fauna of the region. The collections, when this
is being written, are not yet worked out, and I can therefore only
mak