9 o 



SIBERIA IN EUROPE. 



CHAP. IX. 



the 12th of May, about noon, the weather grew hazy, with a 

 very conspicuous halo around the sun, like a dull circular 

 rainbow ; the wind was warmer than it had yet been, and in 

 the afternoon there came on a steady rain, the first rain we 

 had seen since we left home. Sancho Panza says that one 

 swallow does not make a summer ; but the arrival of six 

 species of migratory birds within two days ought to have some 

 significance. On the llth we saw for the first time a pair 

 of swans. The same day on the half open land, between 

 the Petchora and the Zylma, we saw some flocks of wild 

 geese, and, near a pool of water on the ice, half-a-dozen 

 Siberian herring-gulls.* Their cry seemed to me to be 



* The Siberian herring-gull (Larus 

 affinis, Eeinhardt) was first described 

 from a bird obtained in Greenland, 

 where it is probably only an accidental 

 visitor. When we visited the valley 

 of the Petchora, little or nothing was 

 known of its history or geographical 

 distribution. It had long been con- 

 fused with the lesser black-backed 

 gull and the Mediterranean herring- 

 gull. The colour of its mantle is inter- 

 mediate between that of these two 

 species. From the former it may easily 

 be distinguished by the pale wedge- 

 shape pattern on the first few primaries, 

 and from the latter the fact that the 

 tarsus is longer instead of shorter than 

 the foot is an additional mark of dis- 

 tinction, besides the difference in colour. 



When I was in St. Petersburg in the 

 autumn of 1877 I carefully examined 

 the magnificent series of gulls in the 

 museum of the Imperial Academy of 



Science, and discovered that this species 

 appears to breed in the extreme north 

 of Europe and Asia, from the White 

 Sea to Kamtchatka. Middendorf ob- 

 tained it in the breeding season on Bear 

 Island, south of Solovetsk in the White 

 Sea. Harvie-Brown and I obtained 

 eggs in the valley of the Petchora, 

 about latitude 68. Finsch and Brehm 

 found it in the valley of the Obb. I 

 found it breeding abudantly in the 

 valley of the Yenesay, between latitude 

 70 and 71 J. Middendorf brought 

 home skins from the Boganida and 

 Taimyr rivers, near the North-East 

 Cape, and Kittlitz obtained it in Kam- 

 tchatka. The European and West 

 Siberian birds probably winter on the 

 shores of the Arabian Sea, since it was 

 obtained by Karelin both on the spring 

 and autumn migrations in the Caspian 

 Sea, and abounds in winter at Kur- 

 rachee, where; Hume records it (' Stray 



