WAXWING. 529 



plans of which they bethought them for obtaining this coveted 

 treasure. Many tried to keep pairs of living birds in the 

 hope of inducing them to breed in captivity. The Baron E. 

 Konig-Warthausen, we are told, went even to the trouble of 

 caging a whole flock ; but all to no purpose, and it cannot be 

 doubted that prior to 1856 no one with any pretension to 

 the title of ornithologist had ever set eyes on a real egg or 

 nest of a Waxwing.* It is however due to Scandinavian 

 naturalists to say that several of them, who had travelled in 

 Lapland, had expressed themselves confident that the bird 

 did at least sometimes breed in that country, and moreover 

 that it was reliance on their general accuracy which kept 

 alive Wolley's hope of one day finding the long- sought 

 rarity. Of such hope there was need, since it was not until 

 the fourth summer of his oological explorations that his 

 efforts were crowned with success. 



For lack of space the full details of this discovery cannot 

 here be given.! It was effected on Saturday, 7th June, 1856, 

 near Sadio on the Kittila river in Kemi-Lappmark, by 

 Ludwig Matthias Knoblock, Wolley's most trusted follower, 

 who worked night and day to fulfil the wishes of his master, 

 at that time engaged elsewhere. The first prize was a nest I 

 containing two eggs, from which, on the llth (three more 

 eggs having been laid in the meantime), Ludwig snared the 

 cock ; and altogether Wolley's collectors obtained for him 

 in that year some six nests and twenty-nine of these hitherto 

 unknown eggs, with several of the parents, killed (for the 

 sake of identification) from the nests, and a young bird 

 scarcely able to fly. Sending his treasures in the autumn to 

 the Editor, Wolley wrote : " The young Waxwing I should 

 wish our old friend Yarrell to describe, for I think it would give 



* Thienemann figured two eggs (Fortpfl. ges. Vog. tab. xxx. fig. 8 a, J) as 

 those of this species, but in his subsequently- published letterpress (p. 343, note) 

 he says he believes they were those of a North-American Thrush. 



t They will be found in ' The Ibis ' for 1861 (pp. 92-106) and are accom- 

 panied by a plate on which half-a-dozen chosen specimens of the eggs are depicted 

 as Mr. Hewitson only could depict them. 



J The actual finder of this nest was Johan of Sadio; one of a band of seven 

 lads who were working under Ludwig. 



VOL. I. 3 Y 



