only for a short time until it observes that its mate is
left behind. It then flies back, swims with evident distress round
its dead friend, and pushes it with its bill to get it to rise. It
does not, however, spend any special care on its nest or the rearing
of its young, at least to judge by the nest which Duner found at
Bell Sound in 1864. The position of the nest was indicated by three
eggs laid without anything below them on the bare ground, consisting
of stone splinters. The flesh of the phalarope is a great delicacy,
like that of other waders which occur in the regions in question,
but which I cannot now stay to describe.

During excursions in the interior of the land along the coast, one
often hears, near heaps of stones or shattered cliffs, a merry
twitter. It comes from an old acquaintance from the home land, the
_snoesparfven_ or _snoelaerkan_, the snow-bunting (_Emberiza
nivalis_, L.). The name is well chosen, for in winter this pretty
bird lives as far south as the snow goes on the Scandinavian
peninsula, and in summer betakes itself to the snow limit in
Lapland, the _tundra_ of North Siberia, or the coasts of Spitzbergen
and Novaya Zemlya. It there builds its carefully-constructed nest of
grass, feathers and down, deep in a stone heap, preferably
surrounded by a grassy plain. The air resounds with the twitter of
the little gay warbler, which makes the deeper impression because it
is the only true bird's song one hears in the highest north.[64]

On Spitzbergen there is sometimes to be met with in the interior of
the country, on the mountain slopes, a game bird, _spetsbergsripan_,
the rock ptarmigan (_Lagopus hyperboreus_, Sund.). A nearly allied
type occurs on the Taimur peninsula, and along the whole north coast
of Asia. It perhaps therefore can scarcely be doubted that it is
also to be found on Novaya Zemlya, though we have not hitherto seen
it there. On Spitzbergen this bird had only been found before 1872
in single specimens, but in that year, to our glad surprise, we
discovered an actual ptarmigan-fell in the neighbourhood of our
winter colony, immediately south of the 80th degree of latitude. It
formed the haunt of probably a thousand birds; at least a couple of
hundred were shot there in the course of the winter. They probably
breed there under stones in summer, and creeping in among the stones
pass the winter there, at certain seasons doubtless in a kind of
torpid state.

[Illustration: PTARMIG