e the following statement on this point:

From the acquaintance I had made during my own preceding journeys and
the study of others', with the bird-world of the high north, I had got
the erroneous idea that about the same species of birds are to be met
with everywhere in the Polar lands of Europe, Asia, and America.
Experience gained during the expedition of the _Vega_ shows that this is
by no means the case, but that the north-eastern promontory of Asia, the
Chukch peninsula, forms in this respect a complete exception. Birds
occur here in much fewer numbers, but with a very much greater variety
of types than on Novaya Zemlya, Spitzbergen, and Greenland, in
consequence of which the bird-world on the Chukch peninsula has in its
entirety a character differing wholly from that of the Atlantic Polar
lands. We indeed meet here with types closely allied to the glaucous
gull (_Larus glaucus_, Bruenn), the ivory gull (_L. eburneus_, Gmel.),
the kittiwake (_L. tridactylus_, L.), the long-tailed duck (_Harelda
glacialis_, L.), the king duck (_Somateria spectabilis_, L.),[263] the
phalarope (_Phalaropus fulicarius_, Bonap.), the purple sandpiper
(_Tringa maritima_, Bruenn.), &c., of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, but
along with these are found here many peculiar species, for instance the
American eider (_Somateria V-nigrum_, Gray), a swanlike goose, wholly
white with black wing points (_Anser hyperboreus_, Pall.), a
greyish-brown goose with bushy yellowish-white feather-covering on the
head (_Anser pictus_, Pall), a species of Fuligula, elegantly coloured
on the head in velvet-black, white, and green, (_Fuligula Stelleri_,
Pall), the beautifully marked, scarce _Larus Rossii_, Richards, of
which Dr. Almquist on the 1st July, 1879, shot a specimen from the
vessel, a little brown sandpiper with a spoonlike widened bill-point
(_Eurynorhynchus pygmaeus_, L.) and various song-birds not found in
Sweden, &c. Besides, a number of the Scandinavian types living here
also, according to Lieutenant Nordquist, are distinguished by less
considerable differences in colour-marking and size. The singular
spoon-billed sandpiper was at one time in spring so common that it was
twice served at the gunroom table, for which after our return home we
had to endure severe reproaches from animal collectors. This bird is
found only in some few museums. It was first described by LINNAEUS in
_Museum Adolphi Friderici, Tomi secundi predromus_, Holmiae 1764, and
t