BOOKS.

WILD NORWAY.*

THERE is a freshness about this book which most recent works on Norway lack. Mr. Abel Chapman's Wild Spain owed much of its popularity to the pleasure with which readers welcomed an account of the almost unvisited districts of the peninsula in which he shot, climbed, and observed birds, whether the condors of the mountains or

the wild geese of the Andalusian swamps. Norway has been almost over-described. Yet there is not a chapter in this book which would not be missed. The freshness is not due to the chance attraction of " snap-shot," but lucky generalisations. The author bases his work on sixteen years' acquaintance with the country of which he writes. He is also a first-rate ornithologist of the exploring type. But he has divined correctly what is the distinguishing character of the regions of which he writes, and as these " aspects of Nature" dominate the life of wild Norway, the details given of that life take their place in due relation to the whole. Norway, then, is "a land of primitive survivals, of un- formed scenery, of glacial epochs and Eocene forms of life." If it lacks the severe simplicity of the tundra of the North, or the barren Patagonian plains of the South, with their extraordinary results upon animal life, the fjelds, the glaciers, and the mountain - lakes are still in the process of making. Down in the fiords and valleys are strips of temperate Europe. " Upon the roof " is the confusion of an older world. There lies more than two-thirds of Norway unfilled and absolutely wild. This is the hunter's region, the land of the elk, the reindeer, the grouse, and of the few bears, gluttons, and lynxes which remain.

But this unfinished country, snowclad in winter because of its vertical height, is not Arctic, and its birds are not of the Northern type. It has absolutely nothing in common, either in appearance or in its fauna, with the countries on the same latitude in North America :— " The Gulf Stream is the governing factor both as to climate and ornithology. None of the purely ice-loving fowl remain there. The wild geese of Norway are all grey-lags ; her charac- teristic ducks are pintail and widgeon,—all three species of temperate' tastes. The ice-loving brents and barnacles, on the other hand, with the bean and pink-footed geese, the wild swans, northern divers, and true hyperborean fowl, pass right teyond the whole Norsk coast, and seek congenial homes in Spitzbergen (1,500 miles further north), Novaya Zemlya, or Siberia, where no warm current from the tropic tempers the frigid zone, or troubles their incredible love of cold."

The birds migrate to Norway from the Baltic and Siberia in search of a warm climate, including " many millions of the tiniest and most delicate of the summer songsters, such as the blue-throats and redstarts, the icterine, blackcap, and garden warblers, chill-chaff, willow-wren, whinchat, swift, and all our English swallows, and both species of flycatchers as far up as Lapland. Butterflies, ants, and grasshoppers, the former of the loveliest European kinds such as the Apollo and beautiful fritillaries, Antiopa, Paphia, and Comma abound ;

so also do gadflies and mosquitoes."

One of Mr. Chapman's best chapters on natural history describes a day's bird-nesting and fishing on Stirendal Fjeld. Fishing was only incidental. Bird-nesting was the main object. This " walk on the roof " was on the lower fjeld, something like the higher tundra as described by Brehm. The snow had melted, and the sub-Arctic vegetation, creeping birch, flattened by winter snow, dry moss, marsh, bog, stony ground with snow in the hollows, and big lonely lakes, made up the landscape. This was almost as full of nesting birds as the tundra. The species were even more numerous. In one day the fol-

lowing species were found breeding, and most of their nests and eggs discovered,—whimbrel, gull (larus callus),

white wagtail, fieldfare, redwing, willow-wren, redpole, a sand- piper, believed to be a sanderling (one of the birds whose nesting-place in Europe remains to be discovered), black-

• wad Norway. By Abel Chapman. London : Edward Arno-d.

throated diver, egg-shells of willow-grouse, grey-hen, and wild duck, and a goosander's nest. This equals Mr. Seebohm's " heroical" bird-nesting by the Petchora. We will quote one incident showing how universal is the " decoying" instinct of birds seeking to protect their young. A black-throated

diver was disturbed from her nest on an islet. " After flying thirty yards she suddenly collapsed, though I had not fired, and fell heavily on the water, to all appear- ance with a broken wing. There for several seconds she lay flapping helplessly on her side, and swimming round, as

though paralysed, in narrow circles." The chapters on salmon- fishing are interesting as records of the form which the former sport takes on the short, deep rivers of Norway, mere outfalls, generally speaking, between the lakes and

glaciers and the sea. But Mr. Chapman's ornithology is still to the front, and lends distinction to many of these chapters as to those on other forms of sport, and makes them something more than chronicles of a week's fishing in one locality, or shooting in another. Sundays, when fishing is illegal, were often devoted to natural history and " walks " on the fjeld, observing the birds and upland animals. What strikes us most in the accounts of these rambles is the normal recurrence of " vole plagues " on the mountains, and the number of species of owl which are induced by this to make the upper forest fringe and fjeld their home. A " lemming year," or a plague of voles, rats, or mice, is a commonplace of upland life, and the owls swarm to feed on them. The snowy owls go on breeding all the summer in these good times. But besides these are commonly found the great eagle owl, the hawk-owl, the long and short eared owl, and tawny-owl, Tengalms owl, and the sparrow-owl. In the forests the goshawk is common. In 1895 rewards were paid for the

destruction of four thousand four hundred and eighty-six of these birds. Of the lemmings, the main prey of the carnivorous birds, we have the following notes :-

" If his powers were proportioned to his pluck, the lemming would make things lively for the hunter. It attacks with reck- less fury the harmless passer-by. One of these creatures, smaller than a rat, will assail without a second thought a couple of human beings weighing r hundred and fifty pounds apiece. It will spring to one's knees, barking and biting, and in purblind fury fall back ` all-ends-up ' to the earth, only to renew the attack again and again. To-day, while one lemming was flying at me, another from beyond a small stream joined in the demonstration, and presently swam across to get to close quarters. I was not quite sure that the first fall into the water was not accidental, but hardly think so, since once there it came straight on to the charge."

In September Mr. Chapman saw the beginning of their migration. The lemmings all travelled northwards. To explain this the author offers no theory, but he con- firms the stories of their headlong rush to the water. " While crossing Murii Sjoen at daybreak, we frequently

fell in with great fleets of lemmings swimming boldly across the lake, though it was more than a mile in width and full of pike and five-pound trout. After a stormy day, the lee shores were strewn with the dead."

The chapters on hunting large game in Norway gain in interest under Mr. Chapman's treatment, because, perhaps unconsciously, he presents in them the nearest parallel to the life of the great forest of Central Europe two thousand years ago. The ground is more broken ; but the animals of the Hercynian Forest of which the Trans-rhenine tribesmen told Ciesar are all there, except the wild bull. Even the prominence given by Cmsar to the reindeer, while he hardly mentions the red deer, is accounted for by Mr. Chapman. For the wild reindeer of Norway is a much larger animal than the red-deer. A ten- point red deer-stag shot by him weighed sixteen stone ; a rein- deer twenty-six stone ; and a bull elk ninety stone. Elk- hunting was carried on in the primeval forest, mainly with the aid of a hound on the leash. On the " great divide " between Sweden and Norway life was as rude as on the North Canadian Rockies. Savage Lapps, with herds of reindeer, followed in turn by flocks of wolves, disturbed

the elk, but made an interesting study for the elk- hunters. Everywhere round stretched the " dark and funereal verdure of the North," the black lakes, and the primitive forest, in which death and decay compete on almost equal terms with vegetable life. In these forests some few of the primitive big game of Europe must for some time survive, unless the Swedes elect to destroy it by the bounties on the destruction of carnivora. In 1895 " head

money " was paid on forty-four bears, eighty lynxes, fifty gluttons or wolverines, and sixty-one wolves. The wolf deserves no mercy; but Mr. Chapman only records one instance of a sheep being killed by a bear ; and the gluttons and lynxes are too rare and too insignificant to cause damage to flocks. The chapters on reindeer-stalking are no less in- teresting than those on elk-hunting, and both are admirably illustrated. But Norwegian sport is very hard work, and costs both time and money. Mr. Chapman's own conclusions are that the salmon-fishing is dear and uncertain, grouse scarce and difficult to find, and wildfowling as a sport non- existent. Reindeer-stalking gives fair sport, but is pursued under great difficulties, and the elk may be shot at the rate of one bull in nine days. Bat these interests, with trout-fishing and ornithology thrown in, make up the bulk of a very agreeable book, whose pages will not make Norway less popular.