ready described its nest,
which is found in considerable numbers in Gooseland. The bird is
blinding white, resembling the common swan, but somewhat smaller and
with a considerable difference in the formation of the windpipe and
the "keel" of the breastbone. The flesh is said to be coarse and of
inferior flavour.

[Illustration: BEWICK'S SWAN. Swedish, Mindre Saongsvanen.
(Cygnus Bewickii, Yarr) BREASTBONE of Cygnus Bewickii, showing the
peculiar position of the windpipe. After Yarrell. ]

The land-birds in the Arctic regions are less numerous both in
species and individuals than the sea-birds. Some of them, however,
also occur in large numbers. Almost wherever one lands, some small
greyish brown waders are seen running quickly to and fro, sometimes
in pairs, sometimes in flocks of ten to twenty. It is the most
common wader of the north, the _fjaerplyt_ of the walrus-hunters,
the purple sandpiper (_Tringa maritima_, Bruenn.). It lives on flies,
gnats, and other land insects. Its well-filled crop shows how well
the bird knows how to collect its food even in regions where the
entomologist can only with difficulty get hold of a few of the
animal forms belonging to his field of research. The purple
sandpiper lays its four or five eggs in a pretty little nest of dry
straw on open grassy or mossy plains a little distance from the sea.
It also endeavours to protect its nest by acting a comedy like that
of the _tjufjo_. Its flesh is delicious.

In the company of the purple sandpiper there is often seen a
somewhat larger wader, or, more correctly, a bird intermediate
between the waders and the swimming birds. This is the beautiful
_brednaebbade simsnaeppan_, the grey (or red) phalarope (_Phalaropus
fulicarius_, Bonap.). It is not rare on Spitzbergen, and it is
exceedingly common, perhaps even the commonest bird on the north
coast of Asia. I imagine therefore that it is not absent from Novaya
Zemlya, though there has hitherto been observed there only the
nearly allied _smalnaebbade simsnaeppan_, the red-necked phalarope
(_Phalaropus hyperboreus_, Lath.). This bird might be taken as the
symbol of married love, so faithful are the male and female, being
continually to be seen in each other's company. While they search
for their food in pools of water along the coast, they nearly always
bear each other company, swimming in zigzag, so that every now and
then they brush past each other. If one of them is shot, the other
flies away