400 TRAVELS OF A NATURALIST 



the Willow Warbler, but the eggs are infinitely smaller, 

 about half the size. They also brought a couple of 

 Eed-throated Diver's eggs with the bird, which they 

 said was trapped on or at the nest. I have still to learn 

 how that was managed, knowing the difficulty attendant 

 upon trapping Divers at their nests in Scotland. 



July 5. 



On returning to Alexievka — it was now' Monday, the 

 5th of July — a message came from Piottuch for one of us 

 to go and relieve him! He had lain from, say, 4 p.m. 

 till 11 p.m., and had never seen the Swan. 



I wrote the following notes as I lay under a net- 

 work of green branches in the midst of a dense thicket 

 of willows two and a half versts from Alexievka, think- 

 ing myself all the time a fool for my pains, but feeling 

 that, m justice to the man who found the nest, we should 

 do all we could to secure the bird. 



I wondered further w'hat Wild Swan under the blue 

 vault of heaven would come to its nest when a path 

 a yard wide had been beaten down to shoot along, and a 

 conspicuous hut of branches built within view of it, 

 and easily seen from above. A three-storied house 

 might just as well have been built ; the chance of a 

 shot would have been no worse and the place been 

 more comfortable. 



The north wind blew keen and cold, and I had 

 foolishly trusted to Piottuch's sense, or at least his fond- 

 ness for creature comforts, and to his having a malitza ; 

 and took no malitza myself. Live and learn. 



But cold and discomfort would be nothing if there was 

 the ghost of a chance of a shot, which I have no hope for, 

 unless the Swan has had eyes. As Simeon said before at 

 Kuja, ' If the Swan has bad eyes he will shoot it.' 



I am in for five hours of it, however. I'd like a glass 



