CYGNUS BEWICKI. 4.99 
[§ 5386. One.—Jennessei Valley, 1877. From Mr. Seebohm. 
[This was given to me by Mr. Seebohm at his house in Broomhall Park, 
Sheffield, whither I went at his invitation, 3 December, 1877, to see the 
collections he had brought back from Siberia. He assured me that he believed 
all the Swans of the Jennessei Valley to belong to this species, but he promised 
to furnish me with further particulars of this specimen, which he said was not 
taken by himself. Unfortunately he never did so, but on the next evening at 
a meeting of the Zoological Society (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1877, p. 806) he gave an 
admirable though succinct account of his travels and spoils. In the notes 
that he afterwards published (Ibis, 1879, pp. 157, 158) he states that he did 
not succeed in identifying the Hooper in the valley of the Jennessei :— 
“ Every skin which I had an opportunity of examining proved to be that of 
Bewick’s Swan; every footprint in the sand which I measured was that 
of Bewick’s Swan; and all the eggs I obtained agreed in size with those of 
Bewick’s Swan which Harvie-Brown and J obtained in the Petchora, and 
were too small for those of the larger species.” Again, after mentioning the 
thousands of Swans that he saw flying over, he says:—“I brought several 
eggs of Bewick’s Swan home with me, obtained in lat. 693°. I found the 
correct way of identifying these birds was by measuring their footprints in 
the sand, From the centre of the ball of the heel to the centre of the ball 
next the claw of the middle toe, the impression of the foot of Bewick’s Swan 
measures 51 inches, whilst that of the common Wild Swan measures 
upwards of 6 inches. Even in very slight impressions on hard wet sand 
I found it easy to make these measurements.” It does not appear that 
Mr. Seebohm himself ever saw a Swan’s nest in the district. ] 
[§ 5387. Two.—Matyushin Shar, Nova Zembla, 5 June, 19038. 
From HH. J. Koren and H. T. L. Schaanning, through 
Mr. Marsden. 
[These I received with the eggs of Tringa minuta (§§ 38972, 3973) and 
Stercorarius pomatorhinus (§§ 4691-4695). Herr Koren wrote to Mr. Marsden 
that this Swan was not very common, and that it built its nest about a yard 
high, and bedded with dry moss, without any down, and on a quite dry place 
in the swamps. Subsequently Herr Schaanning wrote to me of these 
particular eggs that there were originally four, but that two were destroyed. 
They were taken by Samoieds. He continues (translated): “most of the nests of 
Cygnus minor which I had the opportunity of examining were destroyed by 
Fjeld-Foxes (Vulpes lagopus). In no case did I observe down. The nest 
itself has the form of a huge ant-hill. It consists exclusively of dry peat 
mould heaped up, and is built so as to be visible from far on all sides, and 
always in the immediate neighbourhood of a pool of water in the marshy 
tract. It is about 80 or 100 centimetres high, and the bowl has a diameter of 
from about 45 to 50 centimetres. I saw two newly-hatched young on the 
16th of July, and two young still unable to fly on the Ist of September. ... 
I observed on many occasions that the old female became able to fly before 
the old male, after the shedding of their wing-feathers.”’ | 
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