Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/290

266 Sea Eagle (Haliætus albicilla) was soaring far up in the dusky sky, and Golden-eyed Ducks, Great Northern Divers, Terns, Mergansers, Guillemots, Cormorants, Razorbills, and hosts of other species too numerous to name, made the sea and air dark with their ever-moving forms. Such an ornithological treat is not often to be obtained, and we stood on deck for a long time watching, with the greatest iuterest, the varied forms of life around the ship, which often had to be put at reduced speed in the narrow fjords to give the birds time to hurry their young broods out of danger of being run down. As we progressed northward, the vast flocks of Eider- Ducks seemed ever to increase, and so great were the crowds of the female birds upon some of the numerous islets, that their brown forms perfectly covered the rocks, and they themselves were hardly distinguishable from the tangled masses of dark sea-weed."

A useful portion of Capt. Kennedy's book is the Appendix, con- taining particulars of his expenditure on his tour, which occupied six weeks. During this lime lie eslimates that he travelled as nearly as possible live thousand English miles. These details will be useful to future travellers who may make the same tour, as will also the route-map which is given at the end of the volume. Some of the illustrations are prettily designed, the Long-tailed Ducks (p. 114), and the "Seals at home" (p. 168) being especially characteristic and natural in outline.

might reasonably be doubted, on taking up this volume, whether anything remained to be said on the subject of South Africa, after all that has already been published on this fertile theme. It is not very long since Mr. Anthony Trollope presented us with two thick volumes of South African experiences; and his well-known thoroughness might be thought to have exhausted all the ordinary topics of interest in that direction. Captain Lucas's view of the country, however, has been taken from a different stand-point. Unlike Mr. Trollope, whose sojourn there was com- paratively short, and who, like many another visitor, wrote merely from first impressions, Captain Lucas's residence of nearly fifteen years has enabled him to form a more mature and probably