430 TRAVELS OF A NATURALIST 



of the Little Stint, Curlew Sandpiper, Sanderling, and 

 Grey Plover since I wrote yesterday, for with Piottuch's 

 assistance we have consulted a publication in Kussian, 

 viz., 'Materials for Making a Biography of the Birds 

 of the Volga,' being part i., chapters 2, 3, and 4 of the 

 'Descriptive Catalogue of the High School of the Imperial 

 University of Kasan,' vol. i., published at Kasan in 1871.* 



Of the Little Stint and Temminck's Stint, the editors 

 say that they appear near Kasan, upon ground covered 

 with little lakes and black, marshy ground, with tussocks 

 of grass, on their spring migration, end of April to 

 beginning of May (Old Style) ; or from beginning to 

 middle of May (New Style) ; that they are not seen 

 thereafter until the beginning of August (Old Style, 

 middle of August, New Style), when they return on their 

 autumn migration. They are thus resident at their breed- 

 ing-grounds from the end of May to the middle of August 

 (New Style) (i.e., absent from Kasan and resident at their 

 breeding-grounds) . When seen in spring they are in flocks, 

 and are observed in autumn at Simbirsk, lower down the 

 Volga than Kasan. Their course has been traced also 

 from Simbirsk and Kasan, and on the Kama River as far 

 as Ufa at spring migration. 



The course of migration will then, in all probability, 

 cross the Ural and join the Ob, and descend that river 

 to the sea, spreading out on both sides, and some of the 

 Little Stints straggling back as far as the locality where 

 we found them to the westward and further, specimens 

 having been obtained at Archangel in 1872 by Alston and 

 myself, and on the island of Tamso on the Porsanger 

 Fjord, in the north of Norway, by Collett.t 



* Full title to be found at p. 49 of this journal (MS.). 



f I do not refer here to more recent discoveries, since the date of 

 these journals, well known now to ornithologistsas, for instance, 

 their abundance on the Island of Kolguev, 



