joining fen the Yellow-hammer (Motacilla flava) and some Swallows.
Baron Grundell told me he often had Snow Buntings (Emberiza nivalis), and Ortolans (E. Hortulanus), which last are frequently sold in France for the value of a ducat (nine shillings). These birds are also to be met with in Scania. Here had been plenty of Ruffs and Reeves this year (Tringa pugnax).
He showed me the skins of blue and black Foxes, and also of the variety called Korssraf, Cross Fox (Canis Vulpes β Faun. Suec.), which is of a yellow colour except the shoulders and hind quarters, and they are of a greyish black. He told me he had lately sent the king a live Jarf (Mustela Gulo), and that he had once had another of that species so much domesticated, that when he would have turned it into the water, at the first cutting of the ice, it would not leave him, nor would it feed on any kind of fish alive.
In the garden the Governor showed me
the garden orache, sallad, and red cabbage, which last thrives very well, though the white will not come to perfection here; also garden cresses, winter cresses (Erysimum Barbarea β Fl. Suec.), scurvy-grass, chamomile, spinach, onions, leeks, chives, cucumbers, columbines, carnations, sweet-williams, gooseberries, currants, the barberry, elder, guelder-rose and lilac. Potatoes here are not larger than poppy-heads. Tobacco managed with the greatest care, and when the season is remarkably favourable, sometimes perfects seed. Dwarf French beans thrive pretty well, but the climbing kinds never succeed. Broad beans come to perfection; but peas, though they form pods, never ripen. Roses, apples, pears, plums hardly grow at all, though cultivated with the greatest attention. The garden however affords good radishes, mustard and horse radish, and especially leeks, chives, winter cresses, columbines, goose-tongue (Achillea Ptarmica), rose-campion (Agrostemma coronaria), scurvy-
grass, currants, gooseberries, barberry-berries, wild rose, and lovage (Ligusticum Levisticum), though scarcely cherries, apples or plums.
Barley in some of the neighbouring fields was now beginning to spring up, but in others it was not yet sown.
The Governor informed me of a singular opinion prevalent here concerning the clay in the sand-hills, that it increases and decreases with the moon, so that by digging during the full moon clay may be obtained, but, on the contrary, when the moon is in the wane, sand only will be found in the same spot. The same gentleman remarked that cracks or chasms in the ground are observable in fine or dry weather, which close in cloudy or wet seasons, and may have given rise to the above idea.
Near the water side I caught an Ephemera, of which I made a drawing and description. It was however of a distinct genus from the proper Ephemera, having the wings inclining downwards, not erect,
the tail with two bristles instead of three, and the antennæ bent near the extremity. (This appears to have been a small specimen of the Phryganea bicaudata.)