AN FELL. Mussel Bay on Spitzbergen,
after a photograph taken by A. Envall on the 21st June, 1872. ]

The mode of life of the Spitzbergen ptarmigan is thus widely
different from that of the Scandinavian ptarmigan, and its flesh
also tastes differently. For the bird is exceedingly fat, and its
flesh, as regards flavour, is intermediate between black-cock and
fat goose.[65] We may infer from this that it is a great delicacy.

[Illustration: THE SNOWY OWL. Swedish, Fjelluggla (Strix nyctea L.) ]

When I was returning, in the autumn of 1872, from an excursion of
some length along the shore of Wijde Bay, I fell in with one of our
sportsmen, who had in his hand a white bird marked with black spots,
which he showed me as a "very large ptarmigan." In doing so,
however, he fell into a great ornithological mistake, for it was not
a ptarmigan at all, but another kind of bird, similarly marked in
winter, namely, _fjellugglan_, the walrus-hunter's _isoern_, the
snowy owl (_Strix nyctea_, L.). It evidently breeds and winters at
the ptarmigan-fell, which it appears to consider as its own
poultry-yard. In fact, the marking of this bird of prey is so
similar to that of its victim that the latter can scarcely perhaps
know how to take care of itself. On Spitzbergen the snowy owl is
very rare; but on Novaya Zemlya and the North coast of Asia--where
the lemming, which is wanting on Spitzbergen, occurs in great
crowds--it is common. It commonly sits immoveable on an open mountain
slope, visible at a great distance, from the strong contrast of its
white colour with the greyish-green ground. Even, in the brightest
sunshine, unlike other owls, it sees exceedingly well. It is very
shy, and therefore difficult to shoot. The snow ptarmigan and the
snowy owl are the only birds of which we know with certainty that
they winter on Spitzbergen, and both are, according to Hedenstroem,
native to the New Siberian Islands (_Otrywki o Sibiri_, p. 112).

In the cultivated regions of Europe the larger mammalia are so rare
that most men in their whole lifetime have never seen a wild mammal
so large as a dog. This is not the case in the high north. The
number of the larger mammalia here is indeed no longer so large as
in the seventeenth century, when their capture yielded an abundant
living to from twenty to thirty thousand men; but sport on Novaya
Zemlya and Spitzbergen still supports several hundred hunters, and
during summer scarcely a day passes withou