ORNITHOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS. 301 



to agree perfectly with my birds, which I consider sufficiently distinct 

 from their western representative. 



It was, as I thought, under rather peculiar circumstances that I 

 made the first acquaintance of the Grasshopi^er- warbler. From what I 

 had read about the habits of allied species, and conjectured from the 

 manners of Acrocephalus ochotensis, I listened for this bird about and 

 after sunset, wherever willows were abundant, in the marshy valley 

 bottoms. I recollected the many poetical accounts of ornithological en- 

 thusiasts waiting in the wet swamps for the moon's rising over the 

 white vapors, when the males of Locustella ncevia would commence their 

 strange chirping, and, invisible to the bewitched naturalist, mock 

 round him like mischievous elves, now pitching their ventriloquous notes 

 to the left, now to the right, until the gunning jioet in bewilderment 

 and despair sends a shot at random in the direction from whence 

 the creaking thrills seem to proceed. So I tried patiently to get 

 enchanted, bewildered, water-soaked, and mosquito-bitten too ; but no 

 Locustella ! 



It was a very hot day in the summer of 1882, in fact, the last day of 

 June, that I took an ornithological morning ramble to a broad valley 

 just behind the rounded hills, upon the sloping base of which Petropaul- 

 ski is situated. The weather had been dry and warm for a consid- 

 erable time ; the vegetation was longing for rain, and the soil was gray 

 and dusty. At last I determined to return, when the tropical rays of 

 the sun at noon had silenced all birds, and the only living being in the 

 neighborhood not seeking the cool shade was the mosquito-phobeous 

 naturalist. Suddenly I was struck by the vigorous and rather pro- 

 tracted chirp of a heat-despising cricket. Something in its note led me 

 to wish to get hold of the producer, so I cautiously proceeded in the 

 direction of the sound. Zirrrrr ! But who describes my astonish- 

 ment when I found that the supposed cicada was a small bird facing 

 the sun from the top of a broken and dead birch ! As he did not mind 

 the noise I made, when breaking my way through the five-feet-high 

 grass, if T only took care to stop whenever he interrupted his curious 

 love-song, his fate was soon sealed. It is needless to say that I now 

 became an attentive listener to the grating sound of the locusts, and 

 half an hour later I was rewarded by another male, which I shot from 

 the outer branches of a leaf- clad Betula ermani. 



