WADERS 389 



True, in Arctic America, both knot and sanderling had 

 been discovered breeding on the North Georgian Islands, 

 on Smith's Sound, and elsewhere ; but that I stead- 

 fastly ignored, refusing- to believe that all the thousands 

 of these species that swarm throughout Europe could 

 be of transatlantic origin. I also regarded as merely 

 exceptions, and not as rules, the few instances in which the 

 godwit had been found nesting in Lapland by Wolley, 

 in Norway by Tristram, and so on. The question 

 appeared to me, not one of units or of dozens, but of 

 thousands : and the bar-tailed godwit is not found in 

 America. 



Already, far away in Eastern Siberia, Dr von Midden- 

 dorff, in 1843, had discovered breeding-points of the little 

 stint and grey plover on the Taimyr Peninsula ; while 

 in Europe, first Edward Rae on the Kola Peninsula, and 

 later Seebohm and Harvie-Brown by their journey to the 

 Petchora in 1875, had brought the summer resorts of 

 these two — the grey plover and little stint — within the 

 confines of this continent. But there yet remained the 

 other four- — those four that I before named the "hyper- 

 borean quartette " ; and all eyes turned towards Siberia 

 as affording the only possible breeding-ground in the Old 

 World. 



That anticipation has since been verified ; though much 

 yet remains to discover. Being blocked on the north by 

 a shallow frozen ocean that precludes navigation till late 

 (if at all) in the season, the Siberian tundras cannot be 

 reached by sea in time for observation of nesting-habits. 

 Thus to reach the crucial spots in spring, necessitates 

 a sledge-journey of some thousands of miles over snow, 

 and weeks of labour. 



Not even such obstacles, however, deter British orni- 



