416 Mr. F. C. Seloiis on 



his horses. This he quickly did, aud Mr. B. 11 and 



myself — each of us carrying a liglit collecting-box slung over 

 our shoulders — were soon riding behind our guide down a 

 narrow open channel of water leading out into the marsh. 

 The dej)th of the water varied from two to four feet^ lint was 

 seldom less than three; the bottom, however, was hard and 

 sound, so that the horses never floundered about. Some- 

 times the reeds were fairly thick, though nowhere on this side 

 of the marsh at all dense or very high ; but about a mile 

 from the shore there grew an almost impenetrable reed-brake, 

 with stems as thick as one^s fingers, and flowering tops 

 rising: some ten feet above the water. As we waded slowlv 

 through the shorter and more open reeds, dozens of Purple 

 Herons, Night-Herons, and Little Egrets rose in front of us, 

 while numbers of White-winged Black Terns flew over our 

 heads, but for some time not a nest of any sort could we 

 discover. At last a shout from our guide announced that he 

 had found something, and on our getting up to him he 

 pointed proudly to a Coot's nest containing nine eggs, and 

 seemed much disgusted when he learned that this was not 

 what we were looking for. On being questioned by Mr. B. 



H , who speaks Turkish and Greek fluently, our ciest- 



fallen guide told us that it was eggs of this colour that 

 he had taken a few days before, and that he thought they 

 were laid by the diff"erent kinds of Herons that were always 

 to be seen in the marsh. Blue eggs, he told us, he had never 

 seen. We found that we were unable to penetrate wdth the 

 horses into the dense cane-brake, but, hoping to discover some 

 nests of the White-winged Black Terns, we spent four hours 

 riding all over the more open parts of the marsh. We failed 

 to discover any of the floating nests of the Terns, and I do not 

 think these birds could have yet commenced to build. We 

 met with great numbers of Coots' nests, and some twenty 

 nests of the Great Crested Grebe {Podicipes cristatus), though 

 we never caught sight of either a Coot or a Grebe, as the 

 birds always slipped off their nests and dived or swam away 

 without showing themselves, so that the Turkish shepherd 

 mav be excused for believing that the eggs he had taken had 



