In his Preface, the author says : —
"My only excuse for adding another volume to the already long and ever-increasing list of Scandinavian travels, is my belief that comparatively few of our fellow-countrymen, and more especially of our countrywomen, who, year after year, 'take their pleasure abroad' by returning each successive summer to the familiar Continent, are aware what a splendid field is open to them by paying a visit to the glorious scenery of Norway, or by pushing still further northward across the Arctic Circle to the wilder land of the Laplanders, and the regions lighted by the rays of the midnight sun."
The whole of this paragraph appears to us to be founded upon a misapprehension, for fewer countries are better known than Norway ; and after perusing carefully the 422 pages of Capt. Clark Kennedy's volume we have failed to discover that he has anything new to tell us about it. On the other hand, a good many pages are devoted to matters which have little or no relation to Norway, but appertain strictly to the regions of which he only crossed the threshold. The description, for instance, of the habits of the White Bear (pp. 252 — 256), and the chase of the Walrus (pp. 257 — 260), taken from Lamont's well-known volumes, might well have been omitted, seeing that neither of these animals came under the author's personal observation, and the long account given of the Eider Duck (pp. 197—206) contains no statement with which ornithologists are not already familiar through the writings of previous authors.
In some cases Capt. Clark Kennedy's identification of the species of animals mentioned is incorrect ; as, for example, at p. 156, where he gives the Beaked Whale, or "Bottle-head," the name Delphinus tursio (or, as he erroneously spells it, tersio), which appertains to the Botlle-nosed Dolphin, the scientific name of the Bottle-head being Hyperoodon rostratus (Chemnitz): nor is it correct to term seals "Cetaceæ" (p. 25.3), nor Cetaceæ "fish" (p. 295).
We must do Capt. Clark Kennedy, however, the justice to say that there are many pages in his work relating to the Natural History of the country visited, which are not only readable but entertaining; and if there is nothing very new in the facts narrated, the author has at least succeeded in imparting an air of novelty by the pleasant manner in which he has dealt with them.
