Of the birds, the hyperborean ptarmigan (_Lagopus hyperborea_), which easily procures its food under the snow, undoubtedly winters in Spitzbergen, and probably also the lesser red-pole, which perhaps finds grass seeds enough for its subsistence during the long polar nights, while the snow-bunting (_Plectrophanes nivalis_), and the twenty species of water-fowl and waders that frequent the shores of the high northern archipelago during the summer, all migrate southward when the long summer’s day verges to its end. Until very lately the Spitzbergen waters were supposed to be poor in fishes, though the numerous finbacks, which towards the end of summer frequent the southern and south-western coasts, and, unlike the large smooth-back whales, chiefly live on herrings, as well as the troops of salmon-loving white dolphin seen about the estuaries of the rivers, sufficiently proved the contrary, not to mention the herds of seals, and the hosts of ichthyophagous sea-birds that breed on every rocky ledge of the archipelago. Phipps and Scoresby mention only three or four species of fishes occurring in the seas of Spitzbergen, while the Swedish naturalist Malmgren, the first who seems to have paid real attention to this interesting branch of zoology, collected no less than twenty-three species in 1861 and 1864. The northern shark (_Scymnus microcephalus_) is so abundant that of late its fishery has proved highly remunerative. The first ship which was fitted out for this purpose in 1863 by Hilbert Pettersen, of Tromsö, returned from Bell and Ice Sounds with a full cargo of sharks’ livers, and in 1865 the same enterprising merchant sent out no less than five shark-ships to Spitzbergen. The cod, the common herring, the shell-fish, the halibut have likewise been caught in the waters of the archipelago, and there is every reason to believe that their fishery, which has hitherto been entirely neglected, might be pursued with great success. The mineral riches of Spitzbergen are, of course, but little known. Coal of an excellent quality, which might easily be worked, as it nearly crops out on the surface at a short distance from the sea, has, however, been discovered lately by Mr. Blomstrand in King’s Bay, and similar strata exist in various parts of Bell Sound and Ice Sound. Large quantities of drift-wood, probably from the large Siberian rivers, are deposited by the currents, particularly on the north coasts of North-east Land, and on the southern coasts of Stans Foreland. In English Bay Lord Dufferin saw innumerable logs of unhewn timber, mingled with which lay pieces of broken spars, an oar, a boat’s flagstaff, and a few shattered fragments of some long-lost vessel’s planking.