And now for a few hints to the traveller : 1. Take plenty of money in small change, and English gold. Your expenses will amount to about a guinea-and-ahalf per diem. The money used in Iceland is Danish. English money can be changed at Reykjavík by any of the Danish merchants. 2. The steamer Arcturus sails once a month during the summer, starting from Grangemouth, near Falkirk. The vessel is manned and commanded by Danes. Information respecting the times of departure can be obtained from Messrs. Robertson, at Grangemouth. 3. The names of the guides at Reykjavík are, Olavur Steingrímson, Oddr Gislason, Bjarni, Arni Sigurthsson, Gúthmundr Jónsson, and Magnús. Next time that I go to Iceland, I shall take an English servant with me, and hire an Icelander just to look after the horses. You must be provided with a compass and Gunnlangson's map, then you can find your way as well without as with a guide. The map can be obtained at Reykjavík for 16s.; from Messrs. Williams and Norgate, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, for 30s.; or from Mr. Stanford, Charing Cross, for 21. 12s. You had better provide yourself with a pocket Danish-English and English-Danish dictionary, price 4s., which can be procured from Messrs. Williams and Norgate. It will be found very handy. 4. Take the least possible amount of luggage with you; say, two flannel shirts, a comb and brush, two towels and soap, an oil-skin pilot coat, which can be procured at Grangemouth for 6s. 6d., a sou'-wester, and fishermen's boots. I found my india-rubber contrivances very useless, as the buttons were continually coming off and the material tearing. Fishing stockings are, however, serviceable, but they must be taken great care of, a pair of Icelandic stockings must be drawn over them, and wading shoes over these again. Be provided with rope, hammer, and nails. Horse-shoes must be purchased at Reykjavík. Take also biscuits, portable soup, salt, and a spirit-lamp for boiling coffee or tea. I should advise every tourist to be provided with a veil, as the flies are intolerable near lakes and standing water. Let all the goods be packed in a couple of strong wooden boxes, 15 inches high, 10 wide, and 22 long; the wood of which they are made must be inch thick, and the sides must be morticed into each other. The lid should be arched to let off the rain. These boxes can be procured from Messrs. Day and Son, 353 and 378, Strand. Let the traveller ask for them made after Mr. Shepherd's improved plan. When they are packed take them to the top of the house and roll them down stairs; if they stand the test they will do for Iceland. I recommend that pack-saddles should be brought from England; we found considerable difficulty in getting good ones at Reykjavík. Take also with you a light saddle without a tree, commonly called a pilch. If you are not prepared to undergo the discomforts of lodging in an Icelandic farm, you must take with you a tent, and rugs for a bed. You will then require eight horses; if you do without a tent, six will suffice. 5. Pay a good price for horses; no animals which cost less than 21. 10s. are fit for anything. For riding ponies you will have to pay about 51. Do not bring an Icelandic horse home with you, the climate of England does not suit it, and it becomes fat and desperately lazy. 6. If you go in quest of birds, take a water-dog with you, or an india-rubber boat; the latter would necessitate the purchase of two more horses. 7. Extraordinary precautions must be taken to preserve thermometers from being shivered to atoms. Of ten which a friend of mine took to the Geysir wrapped in wool, seven were broken in two days. "Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt." APPENDICES. APPENDIX A. NOTES ON THE ORNITHOLOGY OF ICELAND, BY ALFRED NEWTON, M.A., Late Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge; Foreign Member of the Icelandic Literary Society (Reykjavík Branch); THOUGH several British naturalists of no mean repute have visited Iceland, I believe that hitherto no connected account of its Ornithology has ever been published in the English language. What is chiefly known of the subject in this country has either been derived from foreign works, or from the communications made to our standard authors by British travellers. Thus, in 1833, Mr. G. C. Atkinson, accompanied by Mr. Cookson and Mr. William Proctor, the present curator of the Durham University Museum, undertook a voyage thither, and, on his return, supplied his friend Mr. Hewitson with a series of valuable remarks, which are to be found in the various editions of that gentleman's work on the Eggs of British Birds. Four years later, also, Mr. Proctor again visited the island, and, besides contributing a few notes on his tour to Mr. Neville Wood's magazine, The Naturalist, for 1838, furnished the late Mr. Yarrell with a good many specimens and some further observations on the birds of Iceland, the latter of which are embodied in his wellknown History of British Birds. But neither Mr. Atkinson nor Mr. Proctor penetrated far into the interior of the island. In 1833, their researches were confined to the neighbourhood of Reykjavík, or, at most, to the south-western portion of Iceland, and in 1837, Mr. Proctor visited only the district of Myvatn, and the interesting, though inhospitable, islet of Grimsey. In 1846, Nearly two years ago Mr. Proctor was kind enough to place in my hands, with liberty to use them as I thought proper, the original journals which he kept on each of his voyages, and they have been of no smail service to me. Mr. Henry Milner, attended by Mr. David Graham, of York, traversed the whole island from Eyafjörer, by way of Arnavatnsheiði, to Reykjavík, and formed a collection of Icelandic birds and their eggs, but he has never published any account of his experiences. Others have, I believe, done the like, and last year (1862) my friend Mr. G. G. Fowler, in company with Mr. Shepherd, spent the summer in Iceland, and from him, as also from Mr. Milner, I have privately derived considerable information respecting its birds. Of my own visit I need say little. In 1858, I passed more than three months in the country, accompanied by that unwearied explorer and talented naturalist, the late Mr. John Wolley, but with the special object we had in view (that of solving, if possible, the moot point of the Gare-Fowl's present existence), we had few opportunities of learning much, from our own general observation, respecting the ornithology of Iceland. Abroad the case has been different. Numerous have been the works published which relate to the zoology of Iceland. From the middle of last century, when Anderson's posthumous Nachrichten von Island called forth Horrebow's celebrated Tilforladelige Efterretninger von Island, through later years, in which appeared Brünnich's Ornithologia Borealis, Olafsen and Povelsen's Reise igiennem Island, Olavius' Oeconomisk Reyse, and Mohr's Forsög til en Islandsk Naturhistorie, the, stream has been flowing almost uninterruptedly till the present time. But I must especially mention the various works of Friedrich Faber-known almost everywhere in Iceland, even now, as "Fugl Faber "—and particularly his Prodromus der isländischen Ornithologie, which contains the result of a year and a half's close and careful research. Though the progress of knowledge in the last forty years has of necessity invalidated some of the author's remarks, the extreme value of this little book is not to be questioned for a moment. I may say that, on two or three almost trivial points, I can myself bear witness to Faber's minute truthfulness. In the German ornithological magazine, Naumannia, for 1857, there is contained an excellent series of papers by a very trustworthy traveller, Dr. Theobald Krüper, recording the observations on the birds of Myvatn and its neighbourhood, made by him during a visit thither in the preceding summer. These are all the more interesting, though, perhaps, to us English the less instructive, as the district was one of the chief scenes of Mr. Proctor's labours, already mentioned. Lastly, I must mention that, in 1860, M. G. Benguerel, a Swiss gentleman, made a prolonged tour in Iceland, and, as he was good enough himself to tell me, formed a considerable ornithological collection, a brief notice of which he subsequently communicated to the Society of Natural Sciences at Neuchatel, in whose Bulletins it will be found; while, simultaneously, Herr William Preyer, accompanied by Dr. F. Zirkel, was performing a similar expedition, the account of which they last year published. To this, their Reise nach Island, the first-named of these gentlemen appended a systematic review of Icelandic vertebrate animals. It undoubtedly contains by far the most complete notice of the birds that has been published since Faber's time, but I am bound to express my opinion that the writer has not shown sufficient discrimination in its compilation. The only work of an Icelander on the ornithology of his own country, that |