TRINGA TEM MINCKi. pha 
The nest is very simple—a few short bits of hay in a little saucer- 
shaped hollow, placed among thin grass or sedge, generally not far 
from the water’s edge, but sometimes in the middle of a meadow. 
The eggs were laid this year (1854) about midsummer-day. 
[The foregoing passages, written by Mr. Wolley at Muoniovara in December, 
1854, for the use of Mr. Hewitson, were printed by that gentleman in the third 
edition of his well-known work, and were published in May, 1855. 
Mr. Wolley’s subsequent experience, especially that gained by him in East 
Finmark in the following summer, would doubtless have led him to modify 
somewhat his expression as to the scarcity of this species in Lapland, for in 
certain localities it might be called plentiful. On the other hand, no 
exception can properly be taken to his statement, which will be found 
immediately below, that the eggs obtained by him on the 28rd of June, 1853, 
were the first he had ever heard of attributed to this bird. True it is that in 
1851 Thienemann had given four figures as those of Tringa temminckt 
(Fortpflanzungsgeschichte der gesammten Vogel, Ixili. 2 ac), but there un- 
fortunately was nothing (nor is there now) to shew that they were authentic, 
while four other figures on the same plate (professing to represent the eggs of 
Himantopus) are manifestly wrong. The discoverer of the breeding-ground of 
this species was certainly Von Middendorff, who, in 1840, found it once near 
Vads6 in East Finmark, as stated in the Report of the ornithological results of 
his Journey in Lapland (Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Russischen Reichs, viii. 
pp. 206, 207) published in 1843, but he evidently did not meet with a nest, 
much less see an egg. In 1845 Lowenhjelm met with a pair of old birds and 
two down-clad young at Alkajaur, on the 22nd of July (KK. Vet.-Akad, Handl. 
1845, p. 402), but still no eggs. They were left to be discovered by Schrader, 
though the precise year in which he first obtained them is not stated, and indeed 
the fact that he had found them was published only by Pastor Passler in the 
‘Journal fiir Ornithologie ’ for September, 1855 (p. 808), at least two months 
after Mr. Wolley had obtained his first nest. It thus appeared that Schrader, 
who went first to Lapland in 1841, and was for several summers on the Varanger 
Fjord, staying especially at Nyborg (where he left, as we ten years after found, 
avery good reputation), had in all that time collected, as he easily would, a con- 
siderable number of this bird’s eggs, which he had brought or sent to Germany, 
and it is presumable that the specimens figured by Thienemann may have 
come from him, in which case there can be no doubt of their genuineness‘, 
and as through the delay in making known his discovery, particularly in this 
country, some injustice has been done to Schrader, it is the more necessary 
that the fact should be fully acknowledged here. | 
1 {It may be observed that Tringa temmincki 1s not mentioned among the species 
met with by him during his first year in Lapland, according to the list given by 
Oken (Isis, 1842, p. 617), nor were its eggs exhibited by Drs. Naumann and 
Baldamus at the ornithological gathering at Kéthen in September, 1845 (Rhea, i. 
| p- 3), but the same list contains “ Tringa minuta (?),” which no doubt should have 
been 7. temmincki. Malm, who was Schrader’s companion in 1841, included 
the latter in the list of birds he observed (Naturhistorisk Tidsskrift, ser. 2, y, 
p- 205), but says nothing of eggs.—-ED. | | 
