196 Mr. A. Newton on the Irruption of 



sand-hill. Of the three eggs sent to Herr Bulow, he found that 

 two were quite fresh^ but in the third the foetus had begun to 

 form, showing that they had been taken from diflferent nests. 

 Some more nests were found by other people, but unfortunately 

 none of them were taken care of. The gunner, at Herr Bulow's 

 request, made further search, but not until the 27th of July did 

 he succeed in making any new discoveries. On that day he met 

 with a flock of about a dozen birds, of which he shot two. He 

 then w^ent again to Bierregaard, where at last he put a bird off 

 its nest among some stones in the sand, and containing three 

 eggs. Next day he returned to it, and set a snare, in which, 

 after two or three hours, the hen-bird was caught ; and a few 

 hours later, having reset the snare, he procured the cock in 

 the same way. In the interval, he found, to his surprise, that 

 one of the eggs had hatched. He took away with him the pair 

 of old birds, the newly born chick, and the remaining two eggs, 

 which, on getting home, he put in a box of wool by the fire, 

 where a second egg was hatched. The third proved to be rotten. 

 The chicks only lived one day, and it seems they were not pre- 

 served. On that same day (the 28th), while waiting about for 

 these birds to be caught, he stumbled on another nest, from which 

 he shot both the owners. I quite agree with Prof. Reinhardt that 

 it follows incontestably from all this that Si/rrhajjtes is not poly- 

 gamous, since both sexes share the duties of incubation, and 

 that the full complement of eggs is three, as in the other Ptero- 

 clidce, and not four, as formerly advanced by M. Delanoue, in the 

 passage to which I before referred. The only questions, as the 

 Professor remarks, on which doubts may exist are whether 

 Syrrhaptes on this occasion was strictly " double-brooded," as it 

 is stated by Herr Radde, in the extract I have given from his 

 work, to be in Eastern Siberia, and whether the same birds may 

 not even have bred in their own home before they started on 

 their colonizing expedition. But, unless they hatch much earlier 

 in the Kirgish Steppes than they do in Dauria, — the 12th May, 

 according to Radde's observation {op. cit. p. 381), reduced to 

 new style, — this last can hardly be the case, since, as I have 

 shown, the horde had already reached the centre of Europe by 

 the 6th of that month. 



