216 Messrs. H. Seebohm and J. A. Harvie Brown on 



bird on the 20tli May, but did not succeed in obtaining a speci- 

 men UQtil the 23rd, by which time it had become common. 

 At one time we were under tlie impression that there must 

 be two species of these birds, one of them a smaller, more 

 buff-breasted, and much more silent bird; and we consequently 

 brought home more than forty skins for examination. We 

 are now convinced that the difference in size and habits is 

 merely the difference of sex. 



On the i2th June, as we were slowly creeping down the 

 great river, we stopped to cook under the lee of a steep bank 

 of the Petchora, just before we entered the delta. The bank 

 was wooded to the water's edge; and Seebohm spent some 

 hours exploring the dwarf forest. Willow- Wrens were com- 

 mon ; and his attention was arrested by one which was most 

 vociferously uttering a note unlike any that he had ever heard 

 from a Willow- Warbler. The note reminded him somewhat of 

 the spitting of a cat, a hissing sound, which he attempted on the 

 spot to express in words. He shot the bird and tied to its leg 

 a label marked Tuz-zuk Warbler, to remind him of the note. 

 The bird proved to be a female. The respective lengths of 

 the wing and tail agree with female P. trochilus; but the wing- 

 formula is different. Out of at least a hundred skins of P. tro- 

 chilus which Seebohm has examined, he has always found the 

 second primary intermediate in length between the fifth and 

 sixth. In the bird in question the second primary is inter- 

 mediate in length between the sixth and seventh. Whether 

 this bird be a different species or not requires further inves- 

 tigation. 



Phylloscopus borealis (Blasius). 



In Seebohm^s collection there are three skins of this species 

 from North-east Russia. One was shot by Harvie Brown and 

 Alston near Archangel ; a second was prociu'cd by Piottuch at 

 Mesen; and the third was shot by Seebohm in the same locality 

 as the variety of P. trochilus ^ust mentioned, and whilst he was 

 searching for a second specimen. He remarked in his diary at 

 the time that the note was more rapid than that of P. trochilus, 

 and more resembling that of the Whitethroat. In fact the 



