Several birds, such as the snowy owl and the ptarmigan (_Lagopus albus_), which can easily procure its food under the snow, winter in the highest latitudes; but by far the greater number are merely summer visitants of the Arctic regions. After the little bunting, the first arrivals in spring are the snow-geese, who likewise are the first to leave the dreary regions of the north on their southerly migration. The common and king eider-duck, the Brent geese, the great northern black and red throated divers, are the next to make their appearance, followed by the pintail and longtail ducks (_Anas caudacuta_ and _glacialis_), the latest visitors of the season. These birds generally take their departure in the same order as they arrive. The period of their stay is but short, but their presence imparts a wonderfully cheerful aspect to regions at other times so deserted and dreary. As soon as the young are sufficiently fledged, they again betake themselves to the southward; the character of the season much influencing the period of their departure. As far as man has penetrated, on the most northern islets of Spitzbergen, or on the ice-blocked shores of Kennedy Channel, the eider-duck and others of the Arctic anatidæ build their nests; and there is no reason to doubt that if the pole has breeding-places for them, it re-echoes with their cries. Nor need they fear to plunge into the very heart of the Arctic zone, for the flight of a goose being forty or fifty miles an hour, these birds may breed in the remotest northern solitude, and in a few hours, on a fall of deep autumn snow, convey themselves by their swiftness of wing to better feeding-grounds. One of the most interesting of the Arctic birds is the snow-bunting (_Plectrophanes nivalis_), which may properly be called _the_ polar singing-bird, as it breeds in the most northern isles, such as Spitzbergen and Novaja Zemlya, or on the highest mountains of the Dovrefjeld, in Scandinavia, where it enlivens the fugitive summer with its short but agreeable notes, sounding doubly sweet from the treeless wastes in which they are heard. It invariably builds its nest, which it lines with feathers and down, in the fissures of mountain rocks or under large stones, and the entrance is generally so narrow as merely to allow the parent birds to pass. The remarkably dense winter plumage of the snow-bunting especially qualifies it for a northern residence, and when in captivity it will rather bear the severest cold than even a moderate degree of warmth. In its breeding-places it lives almost exclusively on insects, particularly gnats: during the winter it feeds on all sorts of seeds, and then famine frequently compels it to wander to a less rigorous climate. [Illustration: 19. BERNIDE GOOSE.]