66 Monograph of the Cranen. 



tants in one season was the more remarkable, as he was not aware of 

 more than four examples having been killed in Norfolk during the last 

 half century. 



Of the nesting of this species in Europe little was known until the 

 publication, by Mr. J. Wolley, of his " Account of the Breeding of the Crane 

 in Lapland" in the Ibis for 1859. As the volume has been long out of 

 print, and very difficult to procure, I have much pleasure in reproducing 

 this most interesting article in full. 



Mr. Wolley states : 



In common with, I believe, most people interested in such matters, I was long 

 entirely in ignorance as to the condition in which the young Crane {Orns communis) 

 would be found on first leaving the egg, whether helpless like a young heron, or able to 

 run about like the young of most waders and of gallinaceous birds. The late Prince 

 Charles Bonaparte had inclined to think that they would long continue nestlings; Mr. 

 Gould, as he assured me, had always opposed the probability of this opinion. 



It was on the 15th June, 1853, that I entered the marsh which the well-known Pastor 

 Lrestadius had told me was the most northern limit in Lapland of the breeding of the 

 Crane. It is in Swedish territory, being on the west side o£ the frontier river, opposite 

 the Finnish (Russian) village of Yli Muonioniska, in about lat. 68°, that is, some distance 

 within the Arctic Circle. This great marsh, called " Iso uoma," is mostly composed of 

 soft bog, in which, unless where the bog-bean grows, one generally sinks up to the 

 knees, or even to the middle ; but it is intersected by long strips of firmer bog-earth, 

 slightly raised above the general level, and bearing creeping shrubs, principally of 

 sallow and dwarf birch, mixed in places with Ledum palustre, Vaccinium ullginosum, 

 Aiidromeda polifolia, Rtthus cliamcemorus, besides grasses, carices, mosses, and other 

 plants. There were also a few bushes or treelets of the common birch, and these quite 

 numerous in some parts of the marsh. 



Walking along one of these strips in a direction where the pair of Cranes was said to 

 be often heard, I came upon a nest which I was sure must be a Crane's. I saw one bit 

 of down. The nest was made of very small twigs mixed with long sedgy grass ; 

 altogether several inches in depth, and perhaps two feet across. In it were two lining 

 membranes of eggs, and on searching amongst the materials of the nest I found 

 fragments of the shells. We had not gone many yards beyond this place, when I saw a 

 Crane stalking in a direction across us amongst some small birch trees, now appearing 

 to stoop a little, and now holding its head and neck boldly up as it steadily advanced. 

 Presently the lads called out to me that they had found some young Cranes. As I ran 

 towards them, a Crane, not the one I had previously seen, rose just before me from 

 among some bushes which were only two or three feet high, and not twenty yards from 

 the place where the lads had been shouting at least for a minute or two. It rose into the 

 air in a hurried, frightened way. There was nothing just at the spot where it got up, 

 neither eggs nor young. I then went up to where the two little Cranes were found. 

 They were standing upright and walking about with some facility, and making a rather 

 loud " cheeping" cry. They seemed as if they could have left such eggs as Cranes were 

 supposed to lay only a very few days. I say supposed, for in England we know nothing 

 of the eggs which are called Cranes', but which may have come fron> any part of the 

 world. They were straightly made little things, short in the beak, livid in the eye, thick 

 in the knees, covered with a moderately long chestnut or tawny-coloured down, darker 

 on the upper parts, softening away into paler underneath. As I fondled one of them 

 it began to peck playfully at my hands and legs, and when at length I rose to go away, 

 it walked after me, taking me, as I supposed, for one of its long-legged parents 



