in the Dobrudscha. 363 



in the living bird than in preserved specimens. In the distance 

 they looked like musquitoes over the water, the flocks probably 

 extending to the farthest end of the lake, which cannot be less 

 than eight or ten nnles off. Here, then, it seemed was the 

 home of the birds, for which the late John Wolley and myself, 

 misled by a false description, had vainly sought in Oland 

 during the spring of 1856. The isthmus between the lake and 

 the sea, uneven with swampy hollows and dry hillocks that 

 support a coarse and scanty vegetation, might surely be their 

 appropriate breeding-places, where, in company with Terns, 

 Pratincoles, Stilts, et hoc genus omne, they might be expected 

 towards the end of May to deposit their eggs. Never was there 

 a greater mistake. A few days later and the thousands have 

 become hundreds, yet a few days more and these will have 

 dwindled down to tens, so that, by the middle of May, it is 

 possible that not a pair will remain behind. Doubtless they con- 

 tinue their northward journey along this coast of the Black Sea; 

 but it is in the marshes and lakes of Central Russia, in the great 

 plains of the Volga, and possibly also in those of the Bug, the 

 Dneiper, and the Don, that oologists must look for eggs of Lai-us 

 minutus. 



In order to make the following notes more intelligible, it would 

 be well to attempt a slight description of the chief features of 

 the Dobrudscha, — not, indeed, with any pretensions to accuracy, 

 as a fortnight's sojourn in a district so little travelled as this is 

 only just sufficient to make a person wish to know more of it. 

 One thing, however, is obvious enough, viz., that the country, 

 instead of being a marsh, much more reseuibles the downs of 

 the chalk formation, being in fact very dry, except in a few parts 

 to be more particularly mentioned subsequently. As the fate of 

 Lord Cardigan's cavalry and also of the French expeditionary 

 column is well known, an impression has gone abroad that the 

 Dobrudscha is marshy and malarious. The bones of the unfortu- 

 nate soldiers composing the latter forces were but lately to be seen 

 on the heights of Kustendje; but whether the men died of cholera, 

 or any other disease, want of water was much more likely to have 

 been a predisposing cause than the excess of it. 



The region north of Baltschik Bay, as far as the delta of the 



2 b2 



