448 Messrs. H. Scebohm and J. A. Harvic Brown on 



work, were often scarcely to l)e distinguished from the low- 

 lying sandbanks we were in search of. ( Vide also Gurney's 

 ' Rambles of a Naturalist in Egypt/ 1876, p. 92, where he 

 makes a similar comparison regarding the flocks of Ducks at 

 Lake Menzaleh.) 



(Edemia fusca (L.). 



On the 27th June, whilst wandering amongst the many 

 lakes which dot the tundra around Stanavoialachta, Harvie 

 Brown saw a single pair of these birds flying over the tundra 

 some distance off", conspicuous beside a number of the Com- 

 mon Scoter, which were haunting a lake close by, from their 

 superior size and large white alar specula. One of them, 

 presumably the female, dropped amongst some dwarf willows 

 and birch in a hollow about a vcrst ofi*; and the male con- 

 tinued his flight. In the hope of finding the nest, Harvie 

 Brown searched the whole of the patch of dwarf wood care- 

 fully, but failed to flush the bird or find the nest. 



We visited Stanavoialachta a second time, later in the sea- 

 son, viz. on 6th July; and we proposed to repair together to 

 these lakes and search again for the Velvet Scoters, the only 

 birds of the species we had seen. Scarcely had we made up 

 our minds to this, and were crossing the tundra together to- 

 wards the lakes, when almost from amongst our feet up got 

 the bird from the nest, and Seebohm shot it. The nest was 

 under a creeping, matted, dwarf birch, far from any water, 

 and contained eight eggs and a good supply of down. These 

 were the only eggs we procured of the Velvet Scoter in Russia, 

 and we saw no more birds. 



Mergus albellus (L.). 



Habariki is a small hamlet of about a dozen houses. It 

 stands on an earth cliff" on the bank of a ^kouria,^ and is gene- 

 rally safe even from the higher floods which cover the sur- 

 rounding country, being about fifty feet above the winter 

 level of the river. This spring the floods had raised the level 

 about twenty feet. (It is at Habariki that the river-steamer 

 lies in winter quarters ; and the captain lives in the village.) 

 In exceptionally high floods, after the disappearance of the 



