208 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLAY 



scriptive natural history ever written. It was when 

 visiting the ' frozen rim ' of the north of Europe 

 and Asia that he discovered the motive which takes 

 certain birds to the Arctic regions to rear their 

 young. 



The author wrote under all kinds of difficulties, 

 at Russian post-stations while the horses were being 

 changed, in peasants' and fishermen's cottages, on 

 wrecked ships, and often after eighteen or twenty 

 hours of outdoor work ; but the reader feels always 

 in the open forest, by the banks of the great rivers, 

 or on the mysterious ' tundra ' between the forests 

 and the frozen sea. His expedition to the Petchora 

 was suggested by two lines of thought. There were 

 half-a-dozen of by no means rare birds, constant 

 winter visitors to Britain, which vanished every 

 spring as completely as if they had flown to another 

 planet. Their breeding place might be either an 

 unknown land, or more probably some region which 

 was not undiscovered, but was never visited by 

 educated Europeans. The birds were the grey 

 plover, the curlew sandpiper, the sanderling, the 

 little stint, the knot, and ' Bewick's swan,' a small 

 wild species found on our coasts in winter. Secondly, 

 but in reference to this first quest, Mr Seebohm, on 

 two visits to Norway and Archangel, had noted the 

 great difference between the birds found on the 



