APPENDIX: NO. LIX. gi 
In the mean time the marsh was by no means quiet ; Ruffs were 
holding something between a European ball and an East Indian 
nautch. Several times “ keet-koot, keet-koot,” to use the words by 
which the Finns express the sound, told where the Snipes were. A 
cock Pintail dashed into a bit of water calling loudly for its mate. 
The full melancholy wailing of the Black-throated Diver came from 
the river; watch-dogs were barking in the distance; I heard the 
subdued hacking of wood and the crackling of Ludwig’s fire. It 
was already about midnight ; Fieldfares were chasing each other 
through the wood ; one came pecking about my feet, and another, 
settling on the branches that covered my back, almost made my ears 
ache with the loudness of its cries. I often heard the waft of known 
wings, but three times there sounded overhead the sweeping wave of 
great wings to which my ears were unaccustomed. I could scarcely 
doubt it was the Cranes’, but I dare not turn up my eye: I even 
once or twice heard a slight chuckle that must have been from them. 
At length, as I had my glass in the direction of the nest, which was 
three or four hundred yards off, I saw a tall grey figure emerging . 
from amongst the birch trees, just beyond where I knew the nest 
must be; and there stood the Crane in all the beauty of nature, in 
the full side light of an Arctic summer night. She came on with 
her graceful walk, her head up, and she raised it a little higher and 
turned her beak sideways and upwards as she passed round the tree 
on whose trunk I had hung the little roll of bark. 1 had not 
anticipated that she would observe so ordinary an object. She 
probably saw that her eggs were safe, and then she took a beat of 
twenty or thirty yards im the swamp, pecking and apparently 
feeding. At the end of this beat she stood still for a quarter of an 
hour, sometimes pecking and sometimes motionless, but showing no 
symptoms of suspicion of my whereabouts, and indeed no manifest 
sign of frar. At length she turned back and passed her nest a few 
paces in the opposite direction, but soon came in to it ; she arranged 
with her beak the materials of her nest, or the eggs, or both; she 
dropped her breast gently forwards, and, a8 soon as it touched, 
she let the rest of her body sink gradually down. And so she sits 
with her neck up and her body full in my sight, sometimes preening 
her feathers, especially of the neck, sometimes lazily pecking about, 
and for a long time she sits with her neck curved like a Swan’s, 
though principally at its upper part. Now she turns her head back- 
wards, puts her beak under the wing, apparently just m the middle 
of the ridge of the back, and so she seems fairly to go to sleep. 
While she sits, as generally while she walks, her plumes are 
compressed and inconspicuous. 
By this time all birds; excepting perhaps a Fieldfare, are silent. 
I was now sure the Crane would not carry off her eggs. After 
enjoying for a short time longer this sight—and no epithet is yet in 
use which expresses the nature of the feelings created by such scenes 
in the minds of those who fully enjoy them—lI found that the air 
was freezing. I quictly got up, and on reaching the fire made myself 
