PETCHORA 457 



or two about fifty yards off, and then again rising and 

 going away. I marked the place but did not spend much 

 time in searching, as I did not think there was a nest or 

 young. Our impression now is, that there cannot be 

 many, if indeed any, more Little Stints young or eggs 

 at this locality, failing as we have done in seeing any 

 more birds there, behaving in the way those of the nests 

 and young we found did, and indeed having seen com- 

 paratively few birds on it at all, since we found the young 

 and eggs. 



This part of the tundra slopes gradually towards the 

 inlet and two lakes of brackish water, and faces the 

 north-east. It is covered with a thick growth of the 

 bushy plants of the Arctic Bramble (Rubus arcticus), 

 which leaves scarcely a square yard free of vegetation. 

 The dwarf rhododendron-like sweet-smelling plant (Sedum 

 palustre) is also tolerably abundant but very small and 

 inconspicuous. Large quantities of deep, soft, faded 

 Sphagnum or yellow moss cover also a considerable 

 portion of the ground, and growing through it are sedges 

 and grasses and a green star-shaped moss, the latter being 

 the same which is often found on the Grey Plover ground. 



Keindeer moss is scarce upon this Little Stint ground, 

 growing only in small tufts here and there, but the 

 innumerable small round hummocks with which parts of 

 it are thickly studded are covered with a thin crust of 

 white lichen, which, blending with the darker colour of 

 the peat soil, gives at a distance a grey hoary appearance 

 to the higher portions of the slope. 



In many places this hummocky ground is sharply 

 denned, giving place at its edges to tracts of slightly 

 damper ground which are covered with matted white and 

 green grass. 



Here and there patches of cotton-grass wave their 

 white heads in the breeze, and single stems of the same 



