MOSCOW 



48; 



the afternoon of Thursday, the 20th of September, our 

 progress having been delayed by the strong westerly gales 

 that continued to prevail. The fair was over, but still a 

 brisk atmosphere of business pervaded the town, the 

 streets and bridges were crowded with traffic, and every- 

 thing denoted activity and prosperity. In a couple of hours 

 we had transferred our luggage to the railway station, 

 delighted once more to see a 

 locomotive, and to feel ourselves 

 drao-o-ed over rails after havino- 

 sat behind about fifteen hundred 

 horses, to say nothing of dogs 

 and reindeer. 



We reached Moscow in good 

 time on Friday morning, Sep- 

 tember 2ist, and I lost no time 

 in presenting my letters of in- 

 troduction to M. Sabanaeff 

 From him I learnt that he 

 had ceased to pursue his orni- 

 thological studies, and had P"iven 



o o 



away his collection to one of 

 the Moscow museums. 



The next day I spent an hour at the museum of the 

 University, looking over Sabanaeff's collection of birds' 

 skins from the Ural. In the University of Kazan I 

 thought disorder reigned supreme, but in that of Moscow 

 I was obliged to admit the final triumph of chaos. There 

 was a collection of more than a thousand skins of birds, 

 specially interesting, being collected on the boundary of 

 the Eastern and Western Palsearctic regions. These 

 skins were all mixed up, the land-birds with water-birds, 

 the large with the small, crammed into drawers and 

 cupboards, with no covering over them, not even a sheet 



RUSSIAN PIPE 



