134 TRAVELS OF A NATURALIST 



so we found it, the weather being lovely during our 

 investigations. 



The country, Mr. Morgan told us, was partly wooded, 

 partly swampy, partly cultivated. The delta is the place 

 for birds, and is of great extent ; also, of course, the sur- 

 rounding forests. Onega is not much good for shooting, 

 and certainly there are not many Waders or AVildfowl 

 there. A large island was spoken of as being about half 

 a day's sail out in the White Sea, where Mr. Dresser was 

 assured that ' all sorts ' of Wildfowl breed, but no one 

 has collected there. Any of the pilots would take us 

 over, as they all live on the island. This evidently refers 

 to Solovetsk. 



We were told that Meves got numbers of little boys to 

 work for him, which may have been the case, but we 

 utterly failed in this. We found them lazy, and not to 

 seem to know the value of kopecs, like ordinary mortals. 



As to the great peninsula which lies to the west of the 

 White Sea, we learnt that it is uninhabited except by 

 fishermen in summer, and along the coast * only. 



It certainly had, to us, a most uninviting aspect from 

 the sea, and the journey to it would be a difficult 

 one. 



As to books and maps relating to the region, we were 

 informed from St. Petersbourg that the maps of the Arch- 

 angel region only existed in small scale, 100 versts to 

 the inch^but when we were there, we had the use of 

 admirable charts of the delta from Mr. Shergold and Mr. 

 Birse, and a copy of the best of these was made and sent 

 to us by Piottuch, and which is now reproduced. 



There were useful papers on the Ornithology, such 



has Hoffmansegg's on the Birds of Archangel in the 



' Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung fiir Naturgeschichte,' 



and Lilljeborg's paper in ' Naumannia,' 1852 ; in addition 



* The Murmariian coast. 



