426 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



stop a couple of those which had risen within twenty 

 yards of tiie gunboat's beam. 



To pass on to the departure of the geese : the facts in 

 connection with their withdrawal are quite as interesting 

 to naturalists as those which attended their appearance. 

 As their arrival here has been shown to have coincided 

 with the closing of the North European sounds and 

 harbours, so their departure was precisely, to a day, 

 contemporaneous with the breaking-up of the ice in those 

 waters. First, as to the weather : after a partial renewal 

 of the storm about the middle of March, a thaw became 

 general here about the 18th. So rapid was the transition, 

 that the snow in my garden, which lay between two and 

 three feet deep on March 18th, bad entirely disappeared by 

 the 20th. On the 23rd a brilliant crop of crocuses ap- 

 peared ; two days later the grass turned green, and all 

 was summer that a short week before had been Arctic. 

 The temperature rose from 1 6 on the gth to 60 on the 

 24th! On the continent the thaw was a few days later, 

 as the following extracts from the daily papers show. On 

 March 24th (thermometer here 60" in shade) a telegram 

 from Bremen stated, " Ice breaking up in Weser and at 

 Vegesack," and on the same date the port of Gothenburg 

 was announced to be open, and the first steamer forced 

 her passage through the ice from Reval. On March 25th, 

 a telegram from Reval reported, "The Baltic ports are 

 now open for navigation ; ice breaking up slowly." A 

 Stettin report of March 26th states, " Complete thaw here : 

 ice disappearing rapidly." Several other telegrams also 

 confirmed the above dates of the re-opening of the waters. 



The departure of the geese coincided precisely with 

 these dates. Large flights left our coast on March 23rd, 

 and still greater numbers on the 24th, many others doubt- 



