Pseudoscolopax taczanovvskii in Western Siberia. 419 



Macrorhamphus semipalmatus from a specimen obtained near 

 Calcutta in the winter, it was again described and figured by 

 Verreaux in 1860 (Rev. et Mag. de Zool. p. 206, pi. 14) as 

 Macrorhamphus taczanowskii from a specimen obtained in 

 Dauria. 



The two specimens now figured, a male and a female in 

 full breeding-plumage, were obtained on the 12/25 May, 

 1908, not far from Tara, in the valley of the Irtysh, Tobolsk 

 Government, Western Siberia. Tara is situated on the left 

 bank of the Irtysh River, about two hundred miles below 

 Omsk. The valley at that point is only about four kilo- 

 metres broad, in some places widening to six or seven 

 kilometres. The right bank is the higher, and is covered 

 with pine and fir wood, forming there the southern portion 

 of the Siberian '' taiga.'* The left bank is broadly bordered 

 by small non-evergreen woods, interspersed by steppe (the so- 

 called steppe-forest belt of Russian geographers), but gives 

 place further south to the true treeless steppe. Between 

 these banks and the bed of the river is a wet meadow inter- 

 sected by marshy rivulets and streams and covered with small 

 lakes and ditches overgrown with reeds, swamps either treeless 

 or with small unhealthy pine-trees, and even mossy bogs 

 near the right bank. This meadow is uneven, with hollows, 

 while parallel with the river are higher beds covered here 

 and there with low bushes of Salix, and on the left side of 

 the river is a narrow belt of high old Salices. The meadow, 

 especially on the left side of the river, is overflowed when 

 the water rises in the spring. 



About a mile from Tara a small river called the x\rkharka, 

 only about five miles long, flows into the Irtysh, and at its 

 mouth the meadow is very low, slimy, and treeless. In 

 1908 the ice on the Irtysh broke up between the 6th and 

 10th of May, new style, and on the 25th of May the water 

 was still very high, so that the lower parts of the valley and 

 that of the Arkharka were under water, with only small strips 

 of land visible here and there. The grass was still very short, 

 the leaves of the birch trees very small. Hooded Crows and 

 Magpies had eggs highly incubated, or young just hatched; 



